Where the Root Runs Deep
by Kato Molotov
Summary: [S3 AU. Work-in-Progress - slow going but will be finished.] The 12th's finest investigators are left to pick up the pieces of their lives and redefine their partnership while the Johanna Beckett conspiracy unravels in front of them.
1. Chapter I

**I : is this to end**

Together. They were going down together.

Kate reached out for her partner to find him beside her in the dark. He was warm, she could feel it through his coat, but wholly, terrifyingly motionless. Soundless too, if not for the faint bubbling sound, she couldn't pin down where or who it was coming from. She instinctively found it sickening, whatever it was.

"No," she croaked, a fresh wave of pain hitting her for the effort, "Castle."

"Castle?"  
"Castle?"  
"CASTLE!"

At last, he stirred at her side, moaned in pain.

Head clearing slightly with the reassurance that he was still with her, she took inventory of her injuries first. There was pain, blinding pain, everywhere, but it seemed concentrated in her shoulder and side. Judging by the fact that she was still conscious, the vitals were probably more or less intact. With some effort, she willed her legs to move and accomplished a spastic sort of movement accompanied by more pain.

"Okay," she said, trying to reassure herself and keep Castle awake, "no spinal cord injuries here."

"Castle?" she asked, and shifted as best she could to face him, to assess his injuries, "Castle, you awake?"

"Hm," he sputtered.

"Castle, where does it hurt? Can you move your arms and legs for me?"

"Beckett…" her partner mumbled weakly, his voice strangled and unusually high, "It's alright, Kate."

"No, Castle," Beckett said as calmly as she could, fearful that this was his goodbye, "you've been shot."

It took him a while to respond. "It's okay."

"NO. Don't you dare drift out on me."

"'M not driftin' out on you," he agreed, drifting in and out. The bubbling sound started up again and she realized with horror that it was Castle after all, just not from his mouth.

"Castle, move your legs."

It took a moment for him to process the command, but for the first time since she woke him, his eyes blinked open and focused on her. In the dark, she could hardly see him at all, but it was enough. She knew he was still in there, and that's all that mattered.

Slowly, his hand reached out, probing around in the dark for hers. Slick with lukewarm, thick blood, their fingers at last found each others' and twined together. He groaned with pain to bend and kick his right leg a little; enough for her to be reasonably sure that he wasn't paralyzed, anyway.

She couldn't find her phone or 2-way, couldn't remember where or how she might have lost it in the fight. Castle used his free hand to grope the inside chest pocket of his coat, reading her mind even now, and moments later he produced from it his phone. Her immediate thought was relief. It was on, and help would be on its way. Then she saw it, more blood covering the phone. Red mist lit up that unnatural claret hue by the backlight as it caked on the screen. Castle's blood. Suddenly, she realized what that bubbling sound was. Three words she'd heard in her academy days came to her: sucking chest wound.

The bile rose up in her throat and panic pushed at her, but she knew calling was their only chance.

Dialing 911, she reached the operator and wasted no time on greetings.

"I need an ambulance now, officers down, I repeat, officers down, suspect down. This is Detective Beckett, badge #41319, 12th Precinct Homicide. I have been shot, my partner has been shot. We're in Flushing on Prince Street, alleyway behind an auto parts store and a bike shop."

Dead silence on the other end for a moment scared her. Did the phone die? Did it cut off?

Finally, mercifully, the dispatcher answered "Okay Detective, we're sending help now," Kate breathed ragged a sigh in relief, "is your partner conscious?"

"Yes," she glanced over to Castle to make sure he still was, "yes, he's got a chest wound and I think a few others, but he's responding. I think he has ah, a collapsed lung or something, just one, he's talking, he's lost a lot of blood. Most of this, most of this is his, I think. I think I got hit in the side, my primary wound is to my shoulder."

She knew she was babbling but it was the only thing that could keep her sane.

"Detective, keep your partner quiet, don't move him too much."

She could do that.

"Okay, Castle," she soothed – him or her herself, she wasn't sure - "we're getting outta here, okay? You need to stay still, but stay with me, alright?" He squeezed her hand in response.

"Gonna be fine, Castle," she murmured, over and over. She repeated her promise and he kept squeezing her fingers, letting her know he was there, until the sirens blazed and the responding paramedics and officers clamored over to them. Relief flooded her and everything became blurry. She watched a few of them step over something else to get to where they were slumped against a wall. A few medics stuck with the thing on the ground, searching for signs of life.

"Bastard's dead," she growled as they hauled Castle onto a stretcher, then amended quickly, "the other guy. Not Castle. Castle's… my partner. Castle's gonna be fine," she blathered on and on, "Other guy's dead. Castle," she never finished as they shifted her away and pried her fingers out of Castle's. The world blacked out on her, too much unsaid, too much undone.

* * *

"Calm down, Miss Beckett!" she heard someone say as her arms were pinned to the side of the bed by several pairs of hands.

"My partner—" a nurse cut her off. "Castle!"

"Is in surgery and you will be again too if you don't settle down."

She'd had surgery? "What?"

Opening her eyes, she tried desperately to take in her surroundings, but her vision was swimming back to her only slowly. "You're coming out of the anaesthesia, you're a little confused. You've just had surgery."

That's right. Got shot. "Where?" she managed out, hoping the nurse understood and would tell her something now that she wasn't fighting to get up again.

"Where were you shot?" Kate nodded. "Shoulder, we had to extract the bullet there, and a nasty graze to your hip. The rest of your wounds were superficial. You're a very lucky woman, Detective Beckett."

Lucky? Did that mean someone else wasn't?

"Please, my partner, is he?" the tall, blonde nurse came into focus, at last. Kate found her nametag and hoped being cooperative with nurse Amy would yield her information.

"I can see you won't rest until I tell you. Usually I can't give patient information, but… your partner is in serious but stabilizing condition. He was shot in the chest, as you reported to the 911 dispatcher, I've heard it was a through-and-through. His lung was partially collapsed but not punctured, they're finishing up working on him now. He also sustained a wound to his left leg, femoral artery was intact. That's all I know right now, I been too busy keeping you from ripping your stitches to hear anything else about Mr. Castle."

"So…"

"So we'll just have to wait and see, and now, Detective, you need to rest."

She stilled and allowed the nurse and the other staff to keep poking at her, refused when they said they were giving her morphine. The pain was there, yes, but she wanted to be awake. Needed to stay awake. Kate closed her eyes to appease Nurse Amy's repeated requests for her to rest, but sleep was not to come. She drifted for hours it seemed, heard the nurses telling someone – presumably her father – that she couldn't take visitors yet. Good. Mentally, she took inventory of the events that had led up to the shootout, piecing together the memories.

* * *

_-earlier-_

She got called into the 12th late in the afternoon on Saturday. It was sheer luck they'd been together at the time. They were gathered in his bright living room, chatting happily with Martha and Alexis, getting ready for a poker match with Castle's English writer friend with the strange name, what it was escaped her now. Alexis was right in the middle of regaling them with a tale of her art teacher going into labour in the middle of class when Beckett's blasted phone rang. She sent it to voicemail once – it was her day off, damnit; they'd been worked to the bone ever since the almost-bombing with few to no whole days off, and she was not the only homicide detective in the city! – but took it on the second call. Montgomery said it was urgent, something to do with her mother's case and Lockwood, and all thoughts of poker and a night off went out the window.

"Come alone," her Captain ordered at first, and the alarm bells started in her head. She ignored them but protested. Castle was right there, he'd never leave well enough alone. Why she bothered advocating for Castle to be in on it – while once not so long ago, all she wanted him to do was stay out of it – she hadn't wanted to dwell on at the time. Montgomery relented, his voice uncharacteristically irritated at the mention of the writer he got on so well with.

_Oh, _she should have listened when Castle voiced exactly what her gut was telling her. He followed her out to the metro station even as he begged her to stop.

"Beckett," he said, nearly pleading, the same pained expression on his features as when he'd seen Raglan's blood spattered across her chest, when he thought she'd been shot in that diner, "we need to call Ryan and Esposito at least."

But she'd refused, too stubborn, too tunnel-visioned to care. It wasn't just her mother's case any more. Lockwood had tortured and almost killed Ryan and Espo, tried to kill her and Castle. Any progress towards catching him was progress enough.

Lockwood's escape weeks before had put everyone on edge. At first, the feds swarmed all over the place, looking for the escapee, but with no promising leads, the hubbub had died down quickly and the manhunt reduced to the occasional mid-broadcast mention on the morning news. Montgomery had a lead. That was all that mattered. She thought she would chase it down and maybe find out the next link in the chain of command. Find out who Lockwood worked for, and if necessary, find out who that guy worked for, so forth and so on, until she found who the puppetmaster was. She could do it with or without Castle.

She told him! She told him to go home. He rejected her command and stayed at her side as they boarded the elevator, crowding her even more than usual. Idiot. _Partners_, he'd said simply.

Montgomery laid it all on the table for them. So he'd claimed, anyway. Lockwood escaped and had called her Captain personally, taunting him. He had tech run a trace, pinged it back to some dumpy neighbourhood in Flushing. The Captain told her, "You want back in on this case, then you do EXACTLY as I say." She agreed, Castle too.

"You go investigate the neighbourhood, you talk to locals, you seek no confrontation, and you report everything back to me, _immediately,_ Detective. You find out what you can about Lockwood and you bring it back. On the off chance that you see him," Montgomery paused and stared at both her and Castle in turn, "then you shoot to kill. Lockwood is too dangerous to try and bring in again."

"Mr. Castle," he continued, slightly softer, "Rick –" the use of the author's first name prompted a raised eyebrow from Castle, but nothing more, "Your permits are in order, I believe?"

Castle nodded stoically. _Permits?_

Montgomery said no more on the matter and went back to the case.

"The FBI is crawling all over this case, but only because he's an escaped prisoner. I don't have to tell you that they're going to scare him if they get close, so I'm going off-book here and I want to give you two the opportunity to investigate first."

Something about the Captain's tone nagged at her, and Castle's frequent worried glances and coolness to Montgomery made it even worse, but it was the best chance they had.

"Beckett," Castle pleaded again, "this doesn't smell right. Montgomery shouldn't be sending you – us – to look at this. This isn't right."

She knew it wasn't. She knew deep down that something was very, very wrong the moment the Captain had uttered the words 'come alone.' Royce taught her that in her first week on the job. 'Come alone' meant one of three things, none of them good: setup, dirty deal, or conspiracy. Heh, big talk, coming from Royce.

"It's not. It's illegal six ways to Sunday, on top of that. But..."

Castle placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezed briefly. _Partners. No matter what._ He didn't have to say it aloud.

They hunted all night. Roaming about Flushing like low-life beat cops, they strayed here and there. Castle was uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable, if the absence of his usual bad jokes and insinuations that they were on a date were anything to go by. He refused to stay behind her, walked by her side almost too close. His normal casual posture was dropped in favour of a more formidable one, and his shoulders squared back, rigid, making him look even taller and broader than usual. The easy gait he walked with turned to a quick clip, and the usual genial expression he wore was replaced with a hard line to his mouth as his laughing eyes turned steely. He continually scanned their surroundings, and if she didn't know better, she'd say he moved like a cop with many years of service under his belt. It was an uneasy thought, that he could move into this persona so easily. She didn't allow herself to dwell on the idea.

Few in that part of the city wanted anything to do with cops. Castle's ease with Mandarin proved valuable, though: after reassuring the citizens of the local Chinese enclave that they weren't immigration or gang task force and weren't interested in anyone's status, they got their information. Shifty white guy, holed up in a backalley garage on Prince Street for the last week, paid cash to the owner, no questions wanted.

It was past 2 in the morning when they'd found the place, dingy and anonymous. The kind of hole where unpleasant meetings between unpleasant people tended to take place in Castle's books. Unsure of what they would find if they entered, they were about to back off and call it in to Montgomery when Lockwood returned to his lair. Caught unawares in the alleyway, it was luck alone that the hitman had only a small handgun on him.

It had all happened so fast. Lockwood fired first, hitting Castle. Beckett put two in him, his stomach, she thought, before she was knocked back. He fired on Castle once more, his cruel look boring into the author. Then, Lockwood simply went down, unresponsive as several more rounds hit him. He fell forward and hit the ground not 10 feet away from them, bleeding between his lifeless, inhumane eyes.

* * *

That wasn't her shot, she realized. Feeling sick all over again, she knew it had to have been Castle who'd put the bullet in Lockwood's skull. Permits. Montgomery knew about this, but she didn't? It was bad enough that she'd pulled a civilian into her case, into the conspiracy, into harm's way, into breaking about 50 different laws for her and Montgomery, into getting shot in an alley. She'd made him a killer now, too. Granted, he killed Lockwood in self-defense and defense of her, but no matter who it is or why, she knew. It changed a person, the first kill. In addition to all the other ways she'd upset his life, now he had first-hand knowledge. _Well, why not have the full set,_ she thought sardonically.

Castle wouldn't see it that way, of course. She could just hear it now, how he'd tell her it was just what partners do and that he'd do it again. He'd crack some stupid joke about always wanting to play cops and robbers.

She wanted his stupid jokes. She wanted him gone – needed him gone – for his own protection, but she still wanted his stupid jokes. And his morning cup of coffee. And his companionship. And his presence at her desk during slow days, playing on his phone or heading to the precinct's gym to spar with Espo while she was stuck doing paperwork. And his invites to poker or Remy's or a Star Wars movie night that she'd been finding increasinly hard to turn down. And his stubborn, pig-headed insistence on fighting dragons with her, even if he was the one getting burned. God damnit, she wanted her partner, her friend, her whatever the hell they were besides that, and he couldn't be that and be safe.

It was so terribly selfish to want that from him, she realized. He was too loyal for his own good. He'd jump down the rabbit hole with her, she knew that now. He'd followed her into a dark alley on highly illegal and possibly unethical orders –_ and where the HELL was Montgomery in all of this?_ she wondered for the first time since she woke up in the hospital – and he'd follow her further if that's what she insisted on dragging him into.

Irrational anger at him welled up inside her. How could he risk himself like that? She was hardly a blip on Josh's radar any more, and her dad, well, he'd carry on. No one depended on her, no one truly needed her. Castle had Alexis to think about. How could he take that risk, leaving Alexis without the only real parent she'd ever had? Especially after running with her for two and a half years. He knew what it took from her, when her mom was killed. She was older than Alexis; she had a father, even when he spiralled down into a bottle. It had turned her life inside out, ripped her heart out of her chest and left her to try to stitch it back together on her own. She'd done a miserable job at it, too. Came out missing some essential piece. How _dare_ he risk doing that to Alexis?

For the first time in the hours since she began feigning sleep, she stirred from her meditative-like state of complete stillness. It wasn't voluntary. She felt the sob wrack her body, double her over in a way that pulled at the stitches in her side.

"Miss Beckett!" the nurse from earlier cried, "what's wrong? Are you in pain?"

Kate shook her head no.

"Miss Beckett, are you worried about your partner?"

Kate shook her head yes. It was all catching up to her and she _hated_ being so weak.

"Well, you should be able to see him in soon enough. He's out of surgery, and while we want to keep you a little while, you should be well enough to visit when he comes around." Nurse Amy patted her good shoulder comfortingly, trying to get her to sit back up straight and not strain her wounds again.

The detective sobbed harder, relieved and exhausted and mad and worried, and selfishly wishing he was by her side through it all. Sobbed until her shoulder pulled and the stitches in her side screamed, and Nurse Amy gave her a dose of pain medicine that she didn't even have the energy to object to.

She'd push him out another day, when he was better and back to health. She'd make the right choice for him, since he'd never make it for himself out of whatever misplaced loyalty she managed to inspire in him. She could be unselfish, she could do the right thing, for once. But not today. She'd keep him just a little longer. Partners, still. _Just for now_, she thought as she dozed off. Just until they're whole enough to be apart.

* * *

**Note**: Comments, questions, concerns, and constructive criticisms are all welcome and much appreciated. Please review!


	2. Chapter II

**II : or just begin?**

Alexis stood immobile in the corner of the room, one eye on her gram and one on the door. She looked ready to attack the next thing that came through it.

"Pumpkin," he rasped out, the act unsurprisingly painful for one who'd been shot in the chest. She turned so fast that her wave of ginger hair whipped into her grandmother's face.

"Dad!" the teenager cried, rushing to his side. "Dad! You're awake!"

Castle winced when she forgot his injuries and threw her arms around his neck, but it was a pain he would gladly endure a hundred times over. The small redhead wept into his – _oh, no, not a hospital gown_ – and rambled incoherently. He tested out his arms, and his left seemed to work better than his right, so he tried his best to wrap it around her.

"Hey, it's okay sweetie," his voice came out gravelly, but seemed to pacify his daughter, "it's just a flesh wound!"

Alexis yanked back from him, her expression turning from worry and relief to utter fury in the blink of an eye.

"Don't you dare invoke Monty Python! You got SHOT, dad! It was 2 inches from your spine!" she shook a finger in his face and looked prepared to give him a full lecture before Martha appeared at her side, halting her finger mid-jab.

"Alexis, honey, your father is on pain medications, he has even less control over it than usual. Trust me, I've seen it before," even in his apparently-drugged state, he recognized an embarrassing story when it was coming and groaned, "Why, when he was 14, he had his appendix taken out, thing ruptured while he was playing baseball, dropped onto the street just like that. They had to give him more anaesthesia twice because he kept waking up in the middle of it and telling dirty jokes. I believe the words 'twelve inch pianist' factored into it."

"Aaaand, ew," Alexis scrunched her button nose in disgust, but looked slightly less frantic. "Did he do anything else? You know, so I know what to expect while he's hopped up on pain killers?"

Martha looked delighted at the invitation to continue.

"I get shot and you two want to have a marathon of embarrassing stories?" Castle piped up, indignant, though secretly he was grateful to Martha's interruption, as it seemed to have taken Alexis' mind off her anger.

"Darling, be thankful we're getting it out before you have any other visitors," Martha crowed airily, but her tender expression betrayed her teasing.

Other visitors?

Oh. OH. Kate. Beckett. How could he have forgotten?

"Where's Beckett?" he blurted out, his mind scrambling to remember. He knew he'd been shot, he knew she'd been shot, he knew Lockwood was dead, but everything else was… hazy. Random flashes here and there, all out of order. "Is she okay?"

Martha sighed as if she knew this was coming. "Calm down, kiddo, she's fine. Little banged up, but she's fine. And if she's the same lady detective I hear whispers about down at the nurse's station, she's already up and howling to get out of here."

Castle shook his head affectionately as a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. That would be his Beckett. Alexis, meanwhile, had slunk away, back to the corner by the door. Martha shot him a meaningful look that said, 'deal with it now.'

"Alexis?" he queried, hoping that his usual method of extracting information from her would work.

He simply left the question dangling, waited for her (seriously overgrown) conscience to get the better of her and spill. Worked like a charm, had since she was a little tiny thing. She held out for an impressive length this time. Martha retreated to a chair and a bad paperback acquired from the hotel gift shop, while Alexis glared alternately at him and at the cheesy paintings that decorated the drab walls. He watched with half concern and half amusement as her face grew redder and trembled from her chin outward, right before the floodgates opened.

"I kinda yelled at Beckett's dad," it all rushed out of her as one long word, but he got the gist.

This was not what he was expecting.

"Go on," he tried carefully, not wanting to push for something specific and make her clam up.

Alexis drew a deep breath, "I was so scared, dad, you were in surgery and all we kept hearing was that you got shot in the chest, and I thought you were dying and then Beckett's dad appears out of nowhere and asks what's going on and I knew she had to be involved somehow, and I guess I screamed at him that if you died it was… it was her fault and it was on her head."

Stunned, Castle struggled to process the implications and what he ought to say to her. He rarely had need to be stern with her, and when he was, it tended to shock her. She didn't need another shock right now, but if he was to receive visitors, he figured he'd have to deal with it. Just… carefully.

"Alexis… I appreciate your concern, I do," he started, gesturing for her to come back to his side. He took her pale, freckled hand in his own, gave her a squeeze. "But you have to understand, Mr. Beckett was surely hurting as much as you and your gram were. That… what you said to him probably made his night a whole lot worse." He watched his daughter carefully and saw her clear blue eyes fill with tears and she nodded in understanding.

"I know, dad. I haven't seen him since but I'll try to tell him I'm sorry next time."

_Well_, he thought. Best he could hope for, given the circumstances. Not how he'd wanted their two families to meet – oh yes, that meeting and many more, one in particular between himself and Beckett's father, were a popular mental floss of the last year or so – but it was what it was. What was said was said. He'd deal with the issue of her blaming Beckett of all people later. For all the traits she didn't inherit from him, it seemed she did inherit the 'losing control of one's filter in stressful situations' trait. In spades. Martha's legacy, he supposed.

"We'll be fine," he said absently, stroking his daughter's arm soothingly, "we're all gonna be fine."

* * *

Declining Beckett's initial request to visit him was one of the hardest things he'd had to do in years. After his hour or two of relative lucidity with Alexis and his mother, he promptly switched back into full idiot mode, making juvenile jokes and botching attempts at shooting-related puns to the nursing staff and to his family. He even gave poor Alexis a long-winded explanation of a new novel that he apparently planned to write about cowboys in space and got mad when she refused to call Black Pawn about it. The ridiculousness of what he was saying and doing hit him at odd moments, and the lucidity seemed to ebb and flow without reason. It made it abundantly clear that the pain medicine did indeed influence him. A lot. And he couldn't afford to not have his senses when he reunited with his partner.

If she was still his partner, that is.

Going off the pain meds was no picnic either, but he needed his brain back under his control as soon as possible. The doctor tut-tutted in disapproval of his choice to decline any further medication, mumbling, 'tell me that in 4 hours.'

4 hours passed slowly and Castle was beginning to see what the doctor meant. His chest killed. Every time he tried to move his arm or shift position, it pulled at both the entry and exit wound, disrupted the bruised and torn muscle and tissue between. His leg was marginally better. Not pleasant – bone nicked, muscles shot to hell, stitches on top of stitches – but functional enough. He found with delight that when Martha and Alexis returned with the change of clothes he requested from home (Alexis must have thrown in the Captain America t-shirt; dry humour, another family legacy), he could bear weight enough on it to get to the bathroom on his own.

Pain or not, though, he felt far more in control of his mind, and more importantly, his mouth. And the sooner he had full control over both, the sooner he could see Beckett.

* * *

It took him until morning to finally feel back to himself enough to see her. He hobbled out of his room absent the recommended wheelchair, slowly made his way down the corridor to where Beckett was still (amazingly) contained. He'd worried she might have checked herself out AMA. Perhaps her father had convinced her.

Jim Beckett was nowhere to be found when he peered in through the window in the door, and Castle found himself relieved. It wasn't that he didn't want to meet the man, but after Alexis' blowup, he thought perhaps that was better left for later.

"Beckett?" he called out tentatively, opening the door just a crack. Hearing no response, he stepped in to get a clearer look at her, finding her asleep. The rest was fitful, he could see. He knew she probably wouldn't like being observed when she was asleep, such a vulnerable state, but damned if he was leaving her now. Taking a seat a respectable distance away, he simply watched her. It was probably creepy, but he couldn't bring himself to stop.

She, like he, had obviously asked for her own clothes and changed into them at some point. She'd made a shaky attempt at her makeup but obviously had done some crying since, as her eyeliner and mascara ran and smudged, making her look distinctly raccoon-like. _Oh Kate_, he thought protectively, _who made you cry and where do I find them? _She was… adorable.

He'd never thought to use that adjective about her before. Tough, yes. Independent, fiercely. Gorgeous, strong, extraordinary, sexy, kind, stubborn? All frequent fliers in his arsenal of Beckett-related vocabulary. 'Adorable' was usually better suited to Alexis, and to other things that he wanted to cradle and protect forever.

But here she was. Adorable. And he did want to pick her up and hold her to him and protect her, even though he knew she'd probably never stand for it. He watched her sleep and time drifted away from him, his thoughts got the better of him, writer's imagination running wild.

"Hey."

His head snapped up at the sound of her voice. "Hey, yourself."

For a second, she beamed at him, no walls, no reservations, like he was the only person on earth she wanted to see, and he nearly forgot how to breathe. And just like that, it was gone, replaced by something careful and guarded and inexplicably sad even as her lips still curled into a small smile.

"So, Captain America, huh? You a hero of some kind?" she asked, choosing her words carefully.

"Might be," Castle shrugged casually, "maybe not." In truth, he'd kind of avoided thinking about what happened in the alley. Alexis mentioned that there were vague notes about a gunfight between police and a criminal in Queens, but no specifics.

"Castle..." Beckett looked for a moment like she was going to tell him to leave and he prepared preemptively to dig his heels in. Instead, she surprised him, shaking her head a little. "I'm glad you're here," she said softly.

"Me too, Beckett. Me too."

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked tentatively.

He searched his mind. There were holes, here and there. He couldn't remember how they got to Queens. He remembered the alley. He remembered shooting that animal dead, before he could hurt Beckett again. He didn't remember why they were... Montgomery.

"Montgomery… oh Beckett, I need to tell you something," it all flooded back to him and he dragged a hand over his face. She peered at him expectantly.

"Montgomery called me, three weeks or so ago it'll be now. Right before Lockwood's escape. He told me that if I wanted to stay in at the precinct, he wanted me to qualify with a weapon. He said it was in case I got in a situation like what happened when Ryan and Espo were tortured… so I could be backup, for you or for them. But I mean, why now? Why after two and a half years, does he want me carrying? I knew there was more to the story, but I just… I didn't want to get kicked out, so I did what I was told and I didn't question him any more."

"Cas-" he silenced her with a hand, unable to stop now that everything was starting to shift into place in his mind.

"Montgomery knew something was going to go down there. He wanted us to find Lockwood. Or find out information on Lockwood for him. Beckett, something is really, really wrong here."

"He's right," a dark voice said from the doorway, the voice belonging to what Beckett was now staring at over Castle's shoulder. "Something is very wrong indeed, Mr. Castle, Detective Beckett."

* * *

**Note**: People on hospital-grade painkillers or coming out of anaesthesia are a whole lot of fun, kids. Make sure you're there to witness and maybe even record all the stupid things your loved ones do and say while hopped up on good drugs. They oughtn't respect you if you don't.

Please take a moment to review and let me know what you think, good or bad!


	3. Chapter III

**III : i saw a shadow**

For a man on an injured leg with a hole in his chest, Castle was surprisingly quick and agile when he lunged to put himself between the interloper and Beckett.

"Take it easy, Castle," Montgomery said, his steady voice betraying the nerves written in the lines of his face.

"Montgomery," Castle greeted coldly, challenge evident in his tone.

For a moment, she thought it'd be funny in other circumstances, seeing Castle act like this, like he was a match for Montgomery. But all too quickly, the memory of his two encounters with Lockwood and other incidents inconsistent with his usual demeanour tugged at her, reminding her that yes, in light of what he'd done to Lockwood less than 2 days prior, he was probably _quite_ a good match for Montgomery, if pushed far enough. In fact, she was beginning to think Castle was a great deal less clumsy and ineffectual than he'd let on all this time.

Kate started, "Captain –"

"Not here for trouble, Detective," the older man said, as if trying to calm them, "just want to talk." Montgomery raised his hands slowly, peeling back his jacket to show that he was unarmed. He even took a seat in the far corner, doing everything in his power to make himself less threatening, perhaps in the hope that her self-appointed guard dog would ease up.

Castle very nearly growled. "Too late. You sent us into trouble knowing that's exactly what we'd find. Why?"

"Sit down, Castle, this will take a while."

Castle refused, only shifted marginally closer to her and leaned slightly on her hospital bed to take some of the weight off his leg.

She almost felt sorry for Montgomery, his countenance equal parts fearful and contrite. He sat in silence for long moments as if searching for enough courage to continue. Looking him over, she saw he was wearing the same jacket he had on Saturday night, obviously hadn't shaved, and the dark circles under his eyes said he hadn't slept. When he spoke, his voice held nothing of its normal rich, buoyant quality.

"First, before I say anything else, I need to tell you both how deeply, deeply sorry I am, for putting you in the position I did. What I was thinking, I cannot answer for. You do need to know, it was never meant to be a suicide mission. I thought I'd send you two out, use whatever information you found, find Lockwood myself or at least have a plan to draw him out."

"The bullets you both took should have been mine. In a way, Beckett," he stopped himself and swallowed thickly, the sound making her gut roll, "_Kate_, this is all my fault."

Her voice shook far more than she wanted it to. "Sir, when you say 'all'-"

"_All_." The Captain's tone brooked no argument. He gazed sorrowfully at her, perhaps searching for forgiveness for all the implications his confession brought with it. The single syllable hit her in the chest, harder than a bullet ever could. All. How far back could 'all' possibly go?

Castle's voice was deep, unconvinced, and still vaguely threatening. "Continue."

And it all spilled out at once, the terrible truth. Montgomery talked for hours, interrupted only by the occasional question or need for explanation by the two investigators. He laid it at their feet: the officers who trained him, the kidnappings, the Armen case, how Johanna Beckett's involvement got her killed, how he and the other officers involved had been blackmailed. How he covered up the evidence of his involvement and steered her away from the case that defined her for so long, for both selfish reasons and a desire to redeem himself by protecting her. How the money from the kidnappings funded a corrupt DA's rise into political power. How he bartered for her life, how he intended to pass that deal along to Castle once he found Lockwood and took him out. Kate glanced up at her partner, who looked vaguely surprised at that particular piece of information.

"They'll come for all of us now, until their whole system is brought down," Montgomery finished, voice raw and hoarse. "You're as safe as I can make you in here. I've got Ryan and Esposito stationed outside this ward, your families are being protected by friends of Esposito's, back from his old department, no one they'll think to read up on. But they will come for you, until the center of all of this is brought down for good."

"Do Ryan and Esposito know what they're dealing with?" Castle asked, the unspoken 'and why?' understood perfectly by all three.

Montgomery made a non-commital gesture. "They know enough. They'll get the gory details soon, like everyone else."

"Sir," she beseeched him, her chest heaving, "_please_. Who is it? Who sent Lockwood? Who is behind all this?"

For a moment, Montgomery wavered, almost gave in to her. She could tell it was eating him alive to not tell her, after all that he had revealed.

"You'll find out soon, Kate. This all starts to unravel tonight, and I promise – this time it's one I can keep – that you'll know it all, sooner rather than later."

Finally, Castle relented, his act dropping and the kinder, gentler man concerned for his friend – no matter what he'd done – returned at last.

"Roy, you're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" he asked, concern evident in every word.

"I've done many stupid things in my life, Castle, as you now know well. This isn't one of them. I've spent the last 30 hours holed up in a sleep 'n' fuck in Alphabet City with stolen files, every case I can find connected to this dirtbag. Got every piece of evidence I need, and then some, to bring this whole mess of a ship down. And I will go down with it."

"How? He'll stop it, intercept it, he'll-" Kate started, half-frantic. Montgomery chuckled humourlessly.

"Not this time. I sent it all to eleven different world news sources - digital and physical copies, just in case – just before I came here. I wouldn't put it past him -" Kate wanted to scream 'who is he!?' "- to have connections with the big three of American media, but no one can stop the British tabloid press," their disgraced Captain smiled ruthlessly at his little joke. "And what the media won't release, the internet will take care of, I made sure of that. There's no getting this genie back in the bottle."

It was a long while before any of them spoke again, all processing what it would mean for them and how their worlds would change the moment Montgomery left the room.

"I'm going to prison. Gonna turn myself in, soon as I leave you two," Montgomery muttered, resigned. "Long overdue. You know, I hoped to avoid it, Saturday night. The cowardly actions of a desperate man, sending you out to do my dirty work for me. If you two had reported back to me about Lockwood before he found you, I was going to call on him, go down in a final standoff with him and his men. Didn't want my wife and kids to know."

"But, I accept it. I accept it now. My actions will not result in any more blood spilt on account of this… this malignancy. I will not be a part of that cancer any longer. This is where I stand."

Somewhere during Montgomery's speech, the tears had started. It was all too much. She wouldn't break down – she _wouldn't –_ in front of Castle and Montgomery. She glimpsed up at Castle, surprised to see unshed tears in his own clear blue eyes. Instinctively, he met her glance and awkwardly plopped himself down on the bed next to her, his leg finally getting the better of him after the hours of standing guard. Like in the alley, like at the motel after Tyson's escape, like in the freezer they nearly died in and in front of the dirty bomb, by which they were almost blown up, his fingers found hers and twined together in a quiet gesture of solidarity. He looked faraway now, almost the same way he looked when he was spinning a theory or coming up with the next adventure of Nikki and Rook.

Rising from his chair, Montgomery approached them as old friends, and this time, there was no hesitation from Castle. The writer struggled to his feet, hauling her up with him by her good shoulder. Captain Montgomery embraced her, held her as he would a daughter, rocking her side to side gently. His collar was wet when she pulled away to let in Castle, who settled for a handshake and a quick clap on the back.

"I'm truly, truly sorry for the hurt I've caused," he said gently and earnestly, "but whatever fallout comes of this, whatever happens, Kate, I am so _proud_ of you. And you too, Mr. Castle. You've both come so very far, and you're going to go so much further still. You two, what you are, what you've become, what you do – that's something worth being proud of. I am so sorry for how we have to end, but it has been a privilege to know you both."

It wasn't fine, so she wouldn't say it was. He stood before her, a man who had impeded her quest for justice for so many years, who knew the truth and held it back. Yet, the words she said came easily and honestly, even though she didn't quite know what they were until they spilled from her in a choked sob.

"I forgive you."

Castle nodded curtly from her side. For him, no more words were necessary, if they were even possible. They stood together and watched their fallen friend go; she had to lean back into her partner on hearing Montgomery's last, barely-audible, 'thank you.'

* * *

He left her a long while later so she could get a meal in her stomach – hospital food, ech – and manage a surprisingly decent shower around her bandages. Nurse Amy was back and read her the riot act for getting wet, but she was careful and the psychological boost it gave her was well worth the lecture.

Feeling halfway human for the first time in nearly two days, she donned the fresh dark blue t-shirt, jeans and underwear that her father had drafted Lanie into bringing to him to pass on to her. The realization that a 64-year-old man was too afraid of what was in his grown daughter's underwear drawer to go get it himself – even after she'd been shot – struck her as strangely, pathetically hilarious.

As if on cue, an unusually-disheveled Jim Beckett knocked and appeared at the door, Lanie in tow. Her friend's hands were full: a duffle bag from her closet (presumably more clothes, though why she'd need that many, she didn't know) in one and a pink bakery box in the other. Jim hadn't come empty handed either.

"Your friends seem to know how to keep you tamed, Katie," her dad drawled tiredly. "Detective Esposito said _someone_ sent this up for you, had to get it through security." His tone was light, but his expression told her that the conversation about why there were cops shadowing him and standing guard of the whole floor, wasn't over. Not by a longshot.

He teasingly held her life source above her head, swirling it around so the aroma filled the air, before finally putting her from her misery and handing it over. _Coffee._ She shook her head incredulously, unable to stop smiling in spite of all that had happened. Castle must have 'a guy' in every corner of the city, if he was able to get her favourite order delivered to the hospital.

She didn't even know where to start, telling her dad about what Montgomery had done, about what was about to come. It needed to happen sooner rather than later, wouldn't do for him to hear it on the 6 o'clock news. After a few minutes of easy chit-chat with him and Lanie, she stopped the conversation.

"Lanie, would you do me a big favour?" she asked seriously.

Her friend smiled indulgently, her brown eyes shining sincerity. "Anything you need."

"Go get Esposito and Ryan, and meet me in Castle's room, alright? I don't care what you have to tell them, if they need to find replacements for security, we'll wait, but they need to hear this."

A testament to the strength of her loyalty to Kate, the M.E. didn't even try to argue as she set the pastry box and packed bag down and walked off at a quick clip to do just that. Steadily, Kate made her way down the hall, found Martha laughing with the nurses at the station. Jim followed a pace behind her, halfway between making sure she was stable on her feet and looking a little lost and unsure of his place among the rest, all so comfortable and familiar to one another.

It was strange, she thought. Martha and even Alexis were so involved, so much a part of her life in and out of the precinct. Martha seemed to always know, in a vague sense at least, what their latest case was, what was going on at the precinct. Alexis dropped into the precinct often enough after school to see her dad, had called her up for advice on this or that every so often, chattered happily with her about their cases and her job over poker night, though she seemed quite a bit more interested in Lanie's line of work. They were so comfortable, so welcoming of her, so much a part of her mismatched precinct family.

But her own father, aside from a basic 'how was your week' phone call, he really didn't have any idea what she did every day. He'd met Lanie a few times, and she thought he might have met Montgomery in passing when she'd first been assigned to homicide, but beyond that? He was a stranger to all of these people who were so important to her. He'd never even met Castle.

"Oh no," she heard a voice cry. Even without seeing its source, she knew it was Alexis. Heart racing, she looked up to see the girl dart into her father's room and followed at a run without thinking, her side becoming uncomfortable where the sutures were tightest.

"What's wrong?" she gasped out as she reached the room, only to see Castle looking up from a chair, as confused as she. Alexis had run into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

Jim caught up to her a moment later and Castle groaned slightly with some kind of understanding. Not the reaction she was hoping for, until he rose up and approached them, ignoring Alexis' strange behavior for the time being.

"Mr. Beckett, I presume?" Castle offered his hand, which her father grasped warmly.

"Mr. Castle, pleasure to meet you."

"Rick, please," her partner slipped back into his socialite persona, ready to turn up the charm if need be, no matter how tired he was. "Wish we could have met under better circumstances…"

Their amiable conversation faded away as she let Martha steer her just outside the door to talk. Lanie hung back nearby with Ryan.

"Sorry about Alexis, darling," Martha breezed, "she and your father had a bit of a run-in, when you and Richard were brought in. Alexis… lost her head, family trait you see. She told him you were to blame for what happened."

Kate sucked in a breath, prepared to apologize for doing just that, but Martha held a dainty, bejeweled hand up to silence her before she could.

"It's nonsense, of course." _Huh?_ "She feels terrible about it now, just terrible. She's not upset at you or your father, dear, she's just ashamed of herself. Please try not to take it personally."

"I uh… I don't," she stammered out. "I don't blame her _at all._" Shockingly, it was the truth. She couldn't say she'd never said worse to her own parents as a teenager, let alone what she might have said under such stress. "I'm sorry she had to go through that shock."

Martha beamed sympathetically at her.

"We've all had a rough few days, you and my son especially. And from what Richard's been acting like… I'm sensing it's about to get a little weird, isn't it?"

Beckett was stunned into a laugh. Her world could fill a library with weird, especially since Richard Castle had shown up in it.

"When is it not weird?"

Martha conceded her point with a snuff of a laugh and a theatrical shrug. "Got me there, kiddo!" And, with that, she sailed back into the room.

Back in the temporary hub – which was rapidly becoming cramped – she gravitated toward the older woman before realizing it and forcing herself to go stand with her father.

She didn't have time to think on what that said about her. Castle and her father lapsed into a mostly-comfortable silence, and Alexis emerged cautiously from her hiding place, her eyes red and her cheeks even redder. Kate could tell she was about to launch into a verbal-vomit session (another Castle family trait) in apology, but surprisingly, Jim intervened.

"Don't believe we've met properly, Miss Castle," he said gently. "I'm Jim."

Alexis stopped, bouncing her gaze between all four adults in the room as if looking for the slightest hint of disapproval. Evidently finding none, she squeaked, "hi," and shook his proffered hand quickly, retreating behind her grandmother quickly afterwards.

Martha beckoned Lanie and Ryan in. The box of pastries was passed around, a strangely festive thing to do in a cramped hospital room on such an occasion, but as she absently chewed her raisin scone, she was grateful for the distraction as awkward greetings were made. Not to mention for the food that didn't taste like it had come from a #10 can. She winced in sympathy when Ryan hugged poor Castle all too tightly, but happily stood for a repeat treatment to her own person, the simple contact healing as much as it hurt.

"Oooh, lookie here!" wheedled Espo as he wandered in, late for the party, "Mom and dad got his and hers matching bullet wounds! Isn't that cute, Ryan?"

Martha smirked, Jim and Alexis looked confused. She rolled her eyes in sync with Lanie, Castle glared, Ryan rewarded him by feeding the birds. Almost normal. Almost.

"So..." Ryan started nervously after a moment. "Montgomery is...?"

"No longer our Captain, by now," spoke Castle, after a beat.

Wondering how many times they'd have to tell the story from here on out, they started at the beginning of Saturday evening, with Castle doing most of the talking, Beckett filling in what he couldn't recall. He stopped short of telling the family the details of Lockwood's death, or what they had found out about during Montgomery's confession, visibly torn between wanting the secret out and wanting to protect his mother and daughter and give the Beckett's their space. Internally, she wrestled with how to tell her father that her mother's case would be public business once more, if Montgomery's mission succeeded, and decided to tell him later in private. Better to see how it all played out.

When Jim, Martha and Alexis were all caught up on what had happened in the alley, they took it as their cue. They left the remainder of the 12th's homicide team and their trusted M.E. alone to discuss the Captain, the fallout, and what it might potentially mean for all of them; individually and as a team. Kate sighed deeply, bone-tired, unbelievably exhausted, but somehow still wired, unable to rest. Too far on edge. As mid-day turned into early evening, and the discussion wound down, dwindled into the sounds of silence, she excused herself to deal with her father before the evening news did.

* * *

**Note**: Still having trouble categorizing this fic, let alone rating it. My apologies if you see it keep changing categories over the next few chapters. While rating-worthy content will be much, much later, if at all, I think I'll still keep it at M on this site - if nothing else for the psychological freedom to let this thing go where it will and not worry about a later rating change.

Thanks so much to everyone who's sticking with this and taking the time to read & review.


	4. Chapter IV

**IV : touch a shadow's hand**

"_They will come for you."_

Montgomery's words rattled through his head. Once his mother and Alexis left for the afternoon, escorted out by one of Esposito's trusted friends, he met up with a solemn and exhausted Beckett once again in his room. He tried to focus on the CNN breaking news report as the talking heads speculated on the validity a conspiracy involving one Senator William Bracken. All the channels were virtually the same, holding back what they knew, either to verify facts (not well likely, facts were rarely important to the media, after all) or to stretch the week's only item of interest out as long as they could.

_A spokesperson for the NYPD says that recently-terminated police Captain Roy Montgomery is claiming sole responsibility for this, quote, 'massive leak of confidential information,' and that may not even be the whole story._

"I've seen him on TV," Beckett spoke hollowly. "I've watched his speeches, seen the clips of him denying having affairs, watched him cut ribbons for new administrative buildings. All this time it's been him and he's right there under my nose."

Castle, for once, was at a loss for words. He took a hard look at her. She was far too pale, all her angles lit up under the harsh fluorescence. The normally-silky brown waves of her hair seemed to dull and had grown increasingly wild and frizzy throughout the day. Her eyes seemed sunken, circles of sleeplessness rimming them, irises dim in the absence of their usual sparkle and challenge. He'd have a difficult time not strangling Bracken himself if he were unlucky enough to cross him, just for turning his partner into this broken, pale specter of her normal self. Settling for silence and a comforting hand on hers, he halfway tuned the broadcast out and retreated back into his mind to do what he did best: plot.

_Senator Bracken has declined comment to CNN or any other media outlet, but we have with us tonight a former employee of the Senator who says, she is not surprised. We go now live to this source, who wishes to keep her name, face and voice obscured, in fear of retaliation._

Clearly nothing immediate could be done to remove Bracken as a threat, these things took time. A case this large, with this many corrupt authorities involved, they could be looking at weeks to round up even the majority of them, months maybe. Longer, to fully prosecute on all of the the cases, especially the old ones Montgomery had released.

True, Bracken's political career was sinking faster than the Titanic, right in front of them, but as long as he was free and parts of his operation were still running, well, there was a bounty on their heads, Castle was sure of it. A greater one than before. How many men did Bracken have at his disposal? Just Lockwood and a few other lackeys? Unlikely. That level of corruption couldn't run on family money and dirty change beat out of a few cops twenty years ago. He had to have other enterprises, all separate from each other but surely connected. Dozens of vile, writhing tentacles, all belonging to the same abhorrent creature.

_William Bracken ranks as one of the nation's wealthiest members of congress, with an estimated net worth of 80-million, according to his personally-issued statements. If, however, these accusations pan out, we could be looking at only the tip of the iceberg here._

The money came from somewhere. Montgomery had told them he was able to trace some of it, but he'd only managed to scratch the surface. Money meant businesses. Business meant people running it and working it – lots of them, potentially. People meant payroll and information. Payroll and information meant that there were likely a lot of peoples' unsavory livelihoods at stake, which in turn meant there was a big red target on anyone who contributed to Bracken's fall.

Montgomery would be safer in prison than they were outside of it. He'd said as much himself, told them during his warning that Bracken's men were connected at every level – politics, military, business. He told them to get out if they could, prepare for a fight if they couldn't.

They'd be discharged the next afternoon. They couldn't hide in this room forever. Ryan and Espo couldn't stand guard forever, any more than their families could live under unofficial police detail forever. What then? He weighed the options carefully.

Staying in the city would keep them close to the case, their families, work. But it also meant being surrounded by Bracken's henchmen, however many of them there were. Time away from the department left them even more vulnerable than they would be, spending their days at the 12th. And while he was fairly confident that Bracken himself wasn't making any immediate orders, given the intense scrutiny now descending on him, they really didn't know how far the rabbit hole went and who else might be eager to silence them.

_Senator Bracken's career has not been without other controversies. In 2008, Senator Bracken was accused of battering a woman he later admitted to having an affair with, as well as being accused of misusing campaign funds and taking bribes during his bid for the senate, which he won by a narrow margin._

Staying put? Not an option, he decided firmly. At least for the duration of their leave. Four weeks minimum, Espo speculated, but they'd have to call in formally once discharged from hospital. Whoever was running the department in the interim would give Beckett her orders.

Running off to some exotic locale had appeal. Somewhere warm, warm was good. Warmth and beaches and Beckett and swimsuits and no interruptions… And yet, not a realistic option either. He sighed. They needed to stay close enough to the city and their contacts therein, stay close to the case, keep an ear to the ground for trouble. Half-day's drive away, at most. Some place where they could blend in, keep a low profile, walk around without being recognized, but still get back to the city in good time if they needed to. Alas, he despaired: nowhere in his radius was sporting bikini weather this time of year.

_No charges have been filed against Senator Bracken on any prior accusations._

Then there was Alexis and Martha to consider. And the senior Beckett, for that matter. They'd be secondary targets, but easier ones. Sticking together was nice in theory, but had its own set of problems. With him and Beckett as the primary targets, should trouble find them, anyone else with them would end up caught in the crossfire.

Immediately following the would-be bombing, he had taken what at the time even he felt was an extreme leap into overprotective dad territory. He'd pulled strings, secured Alexis a spot at a small girls' school in rural Pennsylvania, should he ever need to get her out of the city for longer than a week or two. Interrupting her junior year better than halfway through would probably put him firmly in the doghouse with her, but it was for her own good. She'd understand. Eventually.

_New York City Mayor Bob Weldon famously faced off with Senator Bracken right here on our show in 2010. In a rare display of temper from the Mayor, Weldon heatedly accused Senator Bracken of being 'a liar, a crook, and corrupt to the last hair on his head.'_

Oh, who was he trying to fool? She was going to hate him for this.

The first time he held his tiny daughter, he swore to her and to himself, she'd have the things he didn't. Not necessarily money, though that was a facilitating factor. No, more importantly, she'd have stability. She'd have a consistent, responsible parent. She wouldn't be left with a nanny, get attached only to see her sent away and replaced with a new one. She wouldn't move house every few months, or change schools a dozen times, and she'd never, ever be sent off to boarding school where she'd know no one and be lonely and scared.

_In other news, the manhunt for one Hal Lockwood ended this weekend, the FBI confirms._

But here he was, on the edge of doing just what his mother once did, albeit for very different reasons. Somehow, he didn't think she'd be impressed that his reasons were nobler than a tour playing the suitcase in '_Death of a Salesman_.' There was little in the world that could make Castle more miserable than his daughter being cross with him, but on occasion, it simply came with the territory of being a parent. He'd miss her fiercely, but until things evened out with the people-trying-to-kill-them deal, he'd endure.

He excused himself from Becektt briefly to make the hardest call of his life, informing the school that he'd be dropping his daughter off in 36 hours. Lower-level administration argued with him: dropping in on such short notice was unthinkable and very bad form. He responded by simply going over their heads and calling on the head teacher and dean of students, with whom he had already established a rapport when he had first thought of this little contingency plan some two months earlier. If he learned nothing else as a much younger man (and he did learn very little else during that time), it was that cultivating one's connections and favour was always a worthy, if tiring, venture.

When he returned, he found his partner alternately trying to busy herself and staring blankly at the TV. She gazed at the slimy, simpering headshot of the man responsible for so much damage, the big missing piece in the puzzle around which she had built her life. The case was out of her hands, just like that. He watched her move shakingly about her room, trying to organize and ready her things for what she planned on being her early departure in the morning; trying ready herself to head back into the jungle.

He watched her dump out and re-arrange her souvenir from their time in the hospital. He'd gotten one too: a bag containing several weeks' worth of antibiotics, prescriptions for acetaminophen, miscellaneous dressings and ointments for the wounds, and instructions on the care and dressing as they continued to heal. Personally, Castle thought it was the worst party favour bag he'd ever seen, but Kate was channeling all her energy on it. She restarted four times, painstakingly rearranging her things just-so, only to find it somehow lacking and start over.

When there were no more ways to arrange her medications and dressings, she began moving all the small tokens from friends and family she'd collected over the last few days. Flowers from Ryan over here by the window – no, too much morning sunlight, they'd wilt – over there by the door. The packed bag from Lanie went to several different homes before being shoved unceremoniously into the bathroom, as if it had personally offended her. The small library of gift-shop paperbacks from her father (all untouched, bad Tolkien-ripoff fantasy rags, Castle noted – no murder mysteries or spy thrillers), those were arranged and rearranged on her bedside table. By size, by colour; lined up vertically, stacked on top of each other. She was nearly in tears when she attempted to line them up as if they were on a bookshelf, but, absent a bookend, kept falling over.

It was as heartbreaking as it was strange, watching her like this and being unable to do a single thing to help her, at the moment. He retreated back into his mind, focused on the longer game at hand. With Alexis taken care of, he turned his attentions to the next conundrum.

Martha would be her own difficulty, mostly over being separated from Alexis. Hmm. Hopefully she could be plied with good accommodations and no small amount of groveling from her only son.

_Authorities say that a detective with the NYPD's 12__th__ Precinct, working under former Captain Roy Montgomery's command, was shot and injured early Sunday morning when the escaped inmate known as Hal Lockwood open fired on the officer in Queens. A civilian consultant assisting the investigation, also under Captain Montgomery, was involved and also injured._

The media hadn't released their names yet, but with his name and picture still popping up on Page Six every so often, with convenient mention of his work at the 12th, it would not be long before the gossipmongers of the city put two-and-two together and figured out who the civilian investigator was (how many could there really be?), and by extension, that Beckett was the officer involved. Bracken and his henchmen certainly knew already. They needed to get out of there quickly, before the gossip headlines appeared and the interest in his life spiked up enough for photographers to follow him around again and give Bracken's men a neon sign saying 'come kill me!'

Two years ago, he would have basked in the attention and the bragging rights that came with headlines such as: "Life imitating art: mystery author gets in gritty gunfight!" Now, it turned his stomach.

_The NYPD now confirms that the suspect in the shootout in Queens was killed in what it is calling, quote, "a clear case of self-defense and defense of the public against an armed and imminently dangerous suspect with a history that includes torture and attempted murder of officers in the same precinct." Both the detective and consultant are in good condition, but the department has declined to release their identities or allow the press to interview them._

Esposito had explained earlier that charges wouldn't be brought against him for Lockwood. As far as the department and the ADA were concerned, he was a hero, though an incident report and some amount of mandatory leave for both himself and Beckett, if not the entire team, were inevitable. Honestly, he hadn't even thought about it up until that moment, but it was a relief that not only would he and his family be spared a legal quagmire, but that his standing with the department probably wasn't in too much jeopardy.

_There is no official word that the two incidents have any connection, but you've got to wonder just how big of a coincidence this would have to be._

After a while, he became distracted from considering their options. He began wondering just when it became more than a ride-along to him, when the thought of being kicked out of the department for good was worse than the idea of getting in a mess of trouble for following Montgomery's orders or for killing Lockwood. It was more than the books, even more than just following Beckett around (though, yes, that was still a major appeal) or getting to live out childish dreams of playing detective.

Somewhere along the line, it had started to feel like he was doing something more important than being a ruggedly-handsome bestselling author. It was fun to write books that entertained and engaged people, he wouldn't deny that. Writing was and always would be a passion, a definition, a calling. But it was no longer his _only_ passion, the _only_ thing that defined him, his _only_ calling. There was something more deeply fulfilling about working at the 12th. No number of celebrities in his contact list or Oprah stickers on his books could make him feel that same sense of worthiness, of doing something that mattered on a greater scale.

_'Something worth being proud of.'_ That's what Roy had called them, and that's what his contributions at the 12th were to him, however great or insignificant they really were. Something he was willing to fight for. To die for, even. Of course he didn't want to leave Alexis, or anyone for that matter, but if it came down to it? He'd die for his partner, for his comrades, for his city. Almost had more than once now, and he was no fool. He considered the implications each time, wondered if he was doing the right thing each time. He warred with himself over how he could do that to his family. But no matter how he looked at it, he always came back to the same answer: because the risk was worth it, because the good he and Beckett and the rest of the team did mattered more than he did individually.

Castle owed her everything, for showing up that night at his party. For putting up with him ever since. For letting him in and showing him what it meant to be a better person. For giving him the chance to do something more with his life. He would keep her safe. Whether she liked it or not, he owed it to her, and he would do it happily, without reservation.

* * *

Firing up his phone and popping in one earbud in case a video ad popped up, he got back to the task at hand. After a quick search, he found a site that would illustrate a 250-mile radius around the city for him. The options were wider than he thought. His range extended roughly from Boston to the northeast, Rochester to the northwest, toward Alexis' temporary school in Pennsylvania in the west, and to the Virginia shore to the south. He tried to think strategically.

_Let's see,_ he thought, _if Nikki and Rook had to get out of the city, where would I send them?_

The Hamptons would of course be ideal, except that he was well-known in town and there was even a magazine feature on his house there. It'd be the first place Bracken's men would look.

Trying to lay low in a residential town? Probably not the best idea. People in small towns tended to know each other and would be alert to outsiders. Big cities were anonymous for them, but equally anonymous for anyone else, not to mention hectic. In addition to safety, relaxation had to be considered. They were, after all, going to have a lot of recovering to do, both physically and mentally.

Tourist town might be the way to go. Locals were accustomed to the presence of outsiders; they probably wouldn't be viewed with any curiosity even if he was recognized. Beach towns or historical villages were still quiet enough this time of year that they could easily keep eyes and ears on their surroundings while still blending in and maintaining anonymity. They certainly weren't a mecca for celebrities, ergo, no media hanging around.

Perfect. Now, it was just a matter of deciding on a location and making arrangements.

* * *

"You're awfully quiet." He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice, so wrapped up in his planning that he'd nearly forgotten where he was. Mercifully, she had stopped her frantic organization at some point, settled back down next to him on the edge of her bed. She stared intently at the back of his phone, as if staring hard enough at it would somehow reveal to her what he was doing on it.

"Internet porn," he responded glibly. "I have three days worth of material to catch up on."

Beckett rolled her eyes at him. "Really, Castle? If you want to watch Youtube videos of laser robot wars, fine, but don't lie about it and tell me it's porn." She was trying so hard to bring back their usual banter, act like everything was normal and okay and crushed him that much more that he was sitting there planning to disrupt her world in an even bigger way. 'Don't lie about it.' _Oh Beckett, if only you knew._

"I'll have you know, I enjoy a wide variety of perverse and utterly disgusting online pursuits, Beckett," Castle quipped, congratulating himself on effectively leading her off his trail. A hollow victory, to be sure, but it wouldn't do to have her get curious and interrogate his plans out of him before he hammered out the details. Surprise was his only advantage over her, unless it came to brute force.

Beckett would kick and scream at his plans, he was sure of it. Figuratively, and literally if it got to that point. She'd bristle at the mere suggestion that they retreat for a while rather than run headlong into battle with Bracken and his forces the moment they were out of hospital. He was going to have to convince her, coax her out little by little until she had no argument against it. But if that part failed? Well, no amount of protesting on her part was going to stop him. If it came down it, he knew Ryan and probably even Espo would side with him on the issue, and three against one, they could go over her to do what needed to be done.

* * *

He left Beckett only under duress – _threat_ was such an ugly word – from a nurse that had taken a special liking to his partner and looked like she may well be able to beat him up if he didn't leave her patient for the night. Too agitated to sleep, he spent a great deal of the night informing Ryan and Esposito of his plan. He'd need their help, and besides that, he had decided to put his resources at their disposal, should they want to get some distance as well. Where he had expected some resistance, at least initially, he found none. His other two partners were wholeheartedly on board with his scheme.

Ryan had taken voluntary leave already, not wanting to be there for the fallout from Montgomery's exit, and had made arrangements to take Jenny and stay with family near Philadelphia. Esposito was content to sit tight and wait things out, though he too was on a tight leash at the precinct, pending investigation of the whole department, which was now under scrutiny. Both were ready to help him remove Beckett from the city (whether or not she was happy about it) and promised to keep connected during the time apart.

Staying behind in the city to be their link to the department and case, Esposito managed to convince him to travel in less conspicuous accommodations than those to which he was accustomed. The detective even generously offered to babysit Castle's Ferrari for the duration of his little vacation and drive it daily, lest the battery run down. Such selfless sacrifice.

It was all going smoothly, the pieces falling into place. He'd finally settled on Rehoboth in Delaware late into the night. Nice mix of year-rounders and tourists, plenty of vacation rentals by owner, 5 hour drive to Alexis' new school, 5 hours from the city. Big enough to be fairly anonymous, small enough to be comfortable and relaxing. Finding a nice rental for the month was not difficult; it was amazing what the promise of cash with a 20% bonus for discretion and immediate availability would do for a landlord's attitude.

And now, the hard part: get Beckett to go with him, and come out the other side with all of his vital anatomy intact.

* * *

**Note**: Thanks to all who continue to stick with this admittedly slow-starting story and especially to those who've taken the time to review. It's appreciated more than you'll ever know.


	5. Chapter V

**V : tell all the truth**

"Are you out of your mind?" It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. The whole thing was completely ridiculous.

"Possibly," Castle returned amiably. He looked so calm and self-satisfied. She wanted to hit him.

"I'm not leaving."

How could he possibly think that she would go along with this? Taking her away from the case right as it broke? Putting himself at risk again by being around her?

"Yes, you are," Esposito broke in from the author's side. "'else you're going to have to put up with one of us following you around and the other's gonna get to go on vacation with Castle. You'd be sparing me 'n Ryan a big fight if you didn't make a Sophie's Choice outta the deal and just went yourself."

She couldn't believe that this was what her life had come to. "Absolutely not."

Ryan chimed in, "That's a shame. Be so much easier if you two would just watch each other, but if that's how you want it. Your choice, Beckett – me, or Esposito?"

"You can have the pretty one," Castle drawled with amusement from where he was casually leaned against the door, blocking her potential quick exit. Damnit. She wasn't getting out of this easily, was she?

Esposito and Ryan exchanged a look, giving each other the elevator eyes.

"Which one's the pretty one?" they exclaimed in unison, matching expressions of mock offense. Castle just chuckled and left them wondering.

_Okay, think, Beckett_. Castle was obviously in the middle of some kind of post-shooting mental breakdown. He'd have to be, to think of something this preposterous. Ryan and Esposito, though, they had no excuse. Castle must have somehow strong-armed them onto this one-way train to crazyville. Were they thinking of it rationally, they'd have seen how absolutely absurd this whole scheme was.

It was evident that she wasn't going to win this by fighting outright. She'd lull him into a false sense of security, make him think she was going along with his batshit insane idea. Slip away the moment his guard was let down.

"Beckett," Ryan sobered up, "it's over. There's no more you can do here, no more any of us can do. Even if there was, you're on med leave for 4 weeks minimum, physical and psych eval pending."

White-hot rage bubbled in her. "What are you trying to say, Ryan?" she snapped, knowing it was at the wrong person (_and who exactly is the right one?_), but she was started and couldn't stop. "That I'm too _fragile_ to stay here? That my work is done now that Bracken is being exposed, and I ought to just go work on a tan while the man that ordered my mother's murder still free, still to be tried, still running his criminal empire right underneath my nose? That I need _Castle_ of all people to be my handler and to _babysit_ me? Bullshit, Ryan. I –"

"Nobody's saying that, Beckett," Ryan backed up several feet, but Esposito interrupted before he could continue placating her.

"Actually, that's _exactly_ what we're saying. You're compromised. You're hurt. You're both going to eventually have to deal with getting shot, killing Lockwood, and almost dying. And that ain't gonna be pretty, for either of you. It's going to crash on you at random moments and the longer you try to put it off, trust me, the worse it's going to hit when you finally face it. You need him," the ex-soldier canted his head toward a considerably more serious version of Castle than the one who stood there a moment ago, "and he's gonna need you. You remember the first time you had to use deadly force, Beckett."

She did. Esposito continued, undeterred by the three gaping mouths directed at him.

"It fucks you up. You both need to go deal with this and get better. And looking over your shoulder 24/7 here, sleeping with one eye open waiting for some merc Bracken sends is not how you heal. You can't, not when you're still in combat mode. You got no business working any case right now, let alone this one, and there's nothing you can do on it any more, anyway. IA is crawling all over the precinct as we speak. You think you'll be allowed to touch anything that even has a whiff of Bracken on it? Montgomery let you work that case out of guilt. Those days are over, Beckett."

They could have heard a pin drop in the room as Esposito's speech died to a close. It was easy to forget that Espo had spent time in special forces, that he'd seen worse than probably the other three had, combined.

But this was all so wrong. She'd go away, fine. She would – she'd go to her family cabin upstate, or catch a plane to L.A., or go stay with Aunt Theresa and her eight cats, for all she cared. She just needed to be away from _him._

She seethed with rage all over again. He went behind her back. He decided what was best for her and _Castle doesn't get to do that._ Even if he was right. Even if she still wanted his stupid jokes and his coffee and… _don't go there, Kate._ He doesn't get to decide how the story goes. He doesn't get to choose his own big-damn-heroes ending, borne of stubbornly sticking with her until he gets killed for it. He doesn't get to leave another young girl to mourn a murdered parent. He wasn't a cop. His job wasn't to protect the public. It was hers. He was the public. If he was too dumb or too stubborn to protect himself, she'd have to do it for him, sooner than she originally planned.

"I'm not going," she finally said. "I'll go, I'll go away, but not with _you_."

Castle looked wounded at her statement. _Good_. If he was hurt enough now, maybe it'd make it easier to give him the slip.

"Beckett," he tried, "Kate –"

"Save it, Castle. I'm not going anywhere with you. Go be with your daughter, go live in the mountains, go relax on a beach, go retire to an island in Indonesia for all I care." Lies. "But don't involve me in it."

"Kate –"

"No. You're not a cop, Castle. You need to stop pretending. It's going to get you killed." It came out weaker than she had wanted it to, and Castle knew it, by the look in his eyes. She averted her gaze; the anger, the hurt, the fear, the concern and care she found in those eyes was too much. His breathing grew audible in the room, still a little labored from his bruised lung.

"You're right. I'm not a cop. But do you think I'm an idiot?" he questioned, his words carefully chosen and almost patronizing. She was too angry not to rise to the bait.

"You're not just an idiot, Castle. You're suicidal."

He was. It was only a matter of time before someone got a luckier shot than Lockwood had, before he followed her into the wrong alley and he bled all over her again but he wouldn't wake up next time. She'd told him the truth that day in the freezer – she always figured she would be killed in the line of duty. It was an occupational hazard. She accepted it. She just never intended for anyone to willingly go down with her.

"I'm neither. I know what I'm doing," she tried to protest, but he ignored her and ploughed on.

"You're not the first law enforcement I've worked with. True, it's the first time I've done field work, but I knew what it entailed from the start. I signed that waiver. I know the risks, I know I could die. I know what might happen every time I answer the 2AM calls, every time I walk into the precinct, every time we go to a crime scene or chase down a lead and I sure as hell know it every time I don't stay in the car when you tell me to. It's a choice I do not take lightly."

He drew a ragged breath before continuing and she sneaked a glance at his eyes again. Pain. Desperation. And utter sincerity. _God, of all the times for you to be sincere, Castle. _Why couldn't he just be the arrogant asshole from their early days again and make this easy?

"I don't have a badge, you're right, but I had the same information going in that anyone who goes to the academy does – maybe more, I've only been writing fucking crime novels since you were in primary school, Kate. I made the same choice you did, the same choice Espo and Ryan and everyone else in the department did, to accept the risks."

"WHY?" she exploded, not caring that she sounded hysterical. The question had nagged at her for years. He had _everything_. Why would he choose to sign his life away to beat around with a bunch of cops, if he didn't have a death wish?

"You have Alexis, Castle! You have a family and people who need you and people who would miss you and people who love you, and—"

"So do you," Ryan interrupted softly, apologetically. She'd forgotten he was even there. "Beckett, Castle's right. Everyone on the force has loved ones, and if they don't have a biological family, well, they've got a family now. We all accept the same risk, and most of us accept it for the same reason."

"But _why,_ Castle? You have enough information for the Nikki Heat books by now, surely."

It became clear that she'd said the wrong thing, because Angry Castle was back in a nanosecond.

"You think it's about the books, Kate?" a raised eyebrow suggested she knew what he was inferring, and she didn't like the distinct possibility that he was right one bit.

"I admit it, that part is good, it makes writing easier, but you're right. I have plenty of information, have for years. I shadowed a CIA agent for 8 months and had enough for the entire Storm series. I stay because… because I feel like it means something. Because I feel like my life means more, that I can help even in my own stupid way to bring justice to families who might otherwise be left wondering, the way you've been all these years."

He took a shaky breath and looked as though he was trying not to say too much, or couldn't find the words to say enough. Maybe both.

"Yes, I have a family. So do you. So does Ryan, so does Esposito. And that's why I do it. Because so do the people who end up on Lanie's table, they all had families. At first, I didn't care, you know how I was. It was a game. But knowing you… seeing you, goddamn it, I care now. It's not enough to solve mysteries on paper any more. I'm not a cop, but what I do… it's good, it does some good. It's real. And I'm not willing to give it up without a fight."

Castle was just inches from her face and dropped his voice, continuing on:

"You obviously think I'm just some big clown, tagging along for the ride. And I was, initially. I liked playing cop. I liked bugging you. I liked the material for the books. But that's not the case any longer. If you kicked me out and told me you never wanted to see me again, I'd be hurt – badly – but I'd find somewhere else to contribute, if I could. Another department, P.I. licence, hell, I'd sit around in my underwear and listen to the police scanner and call in tips if that's what it came to. Can't get it out of my system, now; god knows I've tried, I can't."

Stunned silence descended on the group. Something about his last admission, one she was sure he didn't intend to come out, hung between them now in the cold stillness of the room_. Can't get it out of my system._ Fuck. She searched frantically for a defense, a straw to grasp at, a verbal knife to hurl at him, anything.

"You don't get to decide, Castle," she hissed. "I'm not a child."

Castle was undaunted, but marginally more in control of himself than she was. She scolded herself. It was a classic interrogation method, getting your subject to lose control and then hitting where it hurts most. And _he_ was using it against _her_. Never a recipe for success.

"And I'm not either. I made my decisions just as you've made yours. You don't get to tell me what my life is worth to me, just because I have Alexis and mother to think of. And I'm sorry, I chose to think of you too. Maybe I went about it wrongly, maybe I panicked after being shot and finding out about Bracken and Montgomery and this whole crazy mess. Maybe I overreacted, went a little too Bourne Identity, but I just…"

He paused his face contorted almost as if in pain, searching for the right words.

"I'm scared. I don't want to die. I will if I have to, but not for that hump Bracken, and certainly not at the hand of one of his cronies hoping to contain whatever information they think we have. I'm not going to move to Albuquerque and change my name, but I'm not going to be a sitting duck in the city right now, either. I don't have any power to make you go with me, but I hope you will."

And just like that, she felt the last ounce of fight leave her, it was almost a physical sensation. Her shoulders dropped and her eyes slid closed, stinging with barely-repressed tears of anger and stress and frustration and terror at Castle's determination to see things through. She was too tired, too broken down, too confused to do battle with him any more.

"Okay," she whispered in defeat. "I'll go."

* * *

Packing her things with Ryan standing guard at her front door was a surreal experience. A month's worth of her life distilled into a backpack and a single old suitcase. Half of her non-work clothes were already packed, courtesy of Lanie. Was she in on this too?

She'd gone directly from the hospital to her dad's to inform him of her plans and implore him to spend some time away too, head to the cabin upstate if he could. Mercifully, he agreed and only asked her to call when she could.

Ryan had then taken her to the precinct to make her formal statement about the shooting. She met interim Captain Gates: a hard, no-nonsense woman who eyed her with suspicion. For a moment, she felt offended, until the older woman had interrupted their brief interview to order a few uniforms about, and they had received the same treatment. Ryan wasn't kidding, IA was all over, and Gates, by reputation, was born and bound IA.

Turning in her service weapon hurt more than she thought possible. She had a handgun at home, protection wasn't the point. As a sworn, active officer, she was allowed to carry it across state lines, even off-duty. But turning in her issued weapon was… symbolic. She was handing over her status as a cop, her ability to do her job.

Deciding to stop that line of thought before it led her astray, she busied herself sorting through her things, deciding what was necessary and what she could buy in town when she got to wherever Castle was taking her. Somewhere in Delaware, she thought he'd said. She snorted. It was either dumb luck or tactical brilliance that he landed on that locale. No one would think to look for them in _Delaware_.

It was only when she saw her secret murder board window, ironically, that she remembered Josh at all. The guilt was palpable. She hadn't even thought to tell him she was in the hospital. Not that she could get hold of him too easily anyway. Both of their hours were erratic and the time difference between New York and Sri Lanka didn't help.

In a rare moment of honesty with herself, she admitted that Josh was dead in the water the moment he left for his trip. He cancelled his trip to Haiti for her after the freezer, but once reassured she was recovered from that, he wasted little time accepting an assignment to Sri Lanka, 6 weeks minimum.

(She never quite told him the truth about the bomb that might have neutralized half of lower Manhattan.)

He'd been gone four weeks, and she'd hardly noticed, work taking up most of her time and the fruits of Castle's one-man quest to draw her into his social life taking up the remainder.

(She never quite told him about the murder board either.)

Still, she wasn't going to coward out of this. She tried his phone, intending to leave a vague 'we need to talk' voicemail. To her surprise, he picked up on the second ring.

'_Hello?_' a slow voice croaked from the other end.

"Josh! Hi, it's ah, it's me," she tried to keep her voice bright and pleasant.

A fizz of static passed between them before he answered.

_'Who?_'

"Kate." She was a little annoyed that he doesn't recognize his own girlfriend's voice, but chalked it up to poor signal and exhaustion. Maybe her voice just wasn't right any more, since the lump in her throat took up residence sometime between being shot and waking up in the hospital with her partner's name on her lips instead of her boyfriend's.

_'Ooooh. Hi._' He doesn't sound enthusiastic. Actually, now that she thinks about it, he sounded rather… inebriated.

"Look, Josh, something's happened and we need to talk. The other night – "

_'You finally sleep with Castle?_' his voice spat.

Wait. What?

'_Knew it_,' he continued, blabbering on. '_Never even had a chance, did I, Kate? Saw you two, always staring at each other, and it's always 'oh Castle has this theory, oh Castle did that,' alllllll the fucking time, Kate. Yeah, you're too tired for me, but you'll text Castle for hours to 'spin theories?' Bullshit._'

Well. She was going to break up with him anyway, but he'd just made it a hell of a lot easier on her. He'd voiced his fears about Castle before, mostly when he'd put away one too many drinks. She just never knew he was this insecure, to assume right off the bat…

But she _was_ breaking up with him for Castle, wasn't she? In _favour_ of Castle, she corrected herself. In favour of being barely-willing, post-shooting housemates with Castle. Different things.

She let loose on him. "I hope you're not too drunk to remember this when you wake up, Josh, but here's the cliffnotes version: your_ ex-_girlfriend got SHOT and just got out of the hospital. She has a corrupt politician who murdered her mother after her head, and she's going away for a while because she's lost complete control of her life."

Josh barely got a chance to stammer out a 'wait' before she viciously jabbed the end button. She almost threw her phone in her bag with her things. She hardly knew why, instead, she detached the battery and left it on her nightstand.

And that was that.

She angrily threw some casual clothes and pajamas into her bag, not bothering to fold them. They were clean, good enough. For a moment, she paused, toyed with the sleeves of her work blouses and blazers all neatly hung up, ready for work.

_They'll still be here when I get back,_ she coached herself. _And the sooner I cooperate and show the boys and whoever is running the department that I'm fine, the sooner I'll be allowed back in._

They stayed in their place, an incentive and a reminder from afar of the end-game she was playing towards.

At last, she packed her treasures. Her murder board, her photo album, her watch and ring-necklace. She was ready.

* * *

The drive with Ryan was long and nerve-wracking. He took Jenny's car, said she'd had to work and couldn't get time off for another few days, so he was just transport. Philadelphia would have to wait for him. He reassured her that he'd be fine laying low in the city for a few days.

She kept checking the mirrors, looking for any car that followed them for more than a few miles. Perhaps Esposito was right – she'd been out of the hospital just 7 hours by the time the sun set while they were halfway through New Jersey. Already, looking over her shoulder was taking a toll on her mental state. Somewhere around Wilmington, she relaxed slightly, not having seen a repeat license plate in an hour. The assurance that they weren't being followed was a welcome comfort as they travelled another hour and a half of mostly farmland and finally pulled into a community. It was nearly 9PM, another seemingly endless day.

And about to get longer.

Ryan pulled over in the middle of town, parking a block away from the boardwalk. A few people meandered around the few remaining open shops, browsed kitsch and bought unseasonable ice creams.

"It's not far," he said, answering the question she was about to voice. "Castle gave me the address, thought it'd be smarter to walk the rest of the way."

God, he was on board with this whole Jason Bourne thing, too? A part of her thought it was ridiculous. A bigger part was relieved, remembering that her paranoid thoughts of being followed all the way down the Jersey turnpike were only in the none-too-distant past.

They meandered two blocks south along the boardwalk, through an alley behind an arcade, and finally, onto a tree-lined street with many houses. The screened porches and wide streets were a far cry from the city, but not uncomfortable. The place reminded her of the towns her parents used to take her in Jersey. Ticky-tack cottages mingled with larger, statelier abodes, and both looked equally at home.

Finally, they arrived at the address Ryan has scribbled on a little scrap of paper. She couldn't tell in the dark, but she imagined the shingled three-story might be a pleasant sea-battered grey-blue in the daylight. What she could see, as they ascended to the porch and swung the screen door, is that the lights were glowing warm and happy, the red front door and silver knocker lit up. She hardly gripped the knocker when the door opened for her and Castle stood aside to shoo her in.

It took one look at him for her to tell that things had not gone well with Alexis. Castle was pale, his mouth pressed thin and his hair a mess. His typical easy smile wouldn't come when he greeted them.

"Hey," he mumbled subduedly as Ryan shot him a sympathetic look.

Not knowing quite where to go, she left her bags in a small, neat pile at the bottom of the gleaming hardwood staircase. Kate looked to Castle expectantly, looked to him for some kind of direction, but he seemed distracted, far away again.

"Alright if I kip here tonight?" Ryan asked nervously. "I don't think I'm safe to drive home until I get a few hours."

"Sure thing, pick any room you like," Castle responded, and some of the tension eased out of him. While Ryan excused himself and poked around the large house, she and Castle stood off in the entryway, neither knowing quite what to say, wondering who would flinch first. She was vaguely reminded of the time she found herself next to her third grade teacher on an airplane during spring break: too known to feign unfamiliarity, too far out of normal places and roles for comfort.

He dropped his gaze first.

"Uh... if you're hungry, I got some stuff for sandwiches in the kitchen. Or not. You could go find a room. Not, like that, I mean, find a bedroom, for yourself. There's 6 of them. Or watch TV or do... something..." he jabbered inanely, running at the mouth. "I'm just going to go. Away. To my room. It's the one on the right at the top of the stairs, first floor. Or, second floor, the first floor above the ground floor, just one flight up. I'll be back down, but you don't have to... I'm going to shut up and go now. See you when I see you."

For the first time of the day, she smiled, pursed her lips to keep from laughing outright. He's _very_ ridiculous and she found she couldn't be quite as put-off by it as she wanted to be.


	6. Chapter VI

**VI : but tell it slant**

It all went pear-shaped so quickly, he hardly knew what hit him.

He'd gravely misjudged... well, everything, actually. Beckett's frighteningly distorted thinking regarding the worth of her own life, for starters. He knew she was given to obsession, but just how far that extended? He'd had no idea. In his naivety, he actually thought she'd welcome a chance to step back and let the justice system take care of Bracken. Thought she'd be relieved. Thought she'd rest for a while, want a little peace to figure out what she'd do and how she'd define herself, now that her mother's case was out of her hands and resolution was coming.

The thought had even occurred to him, while she was still contained in the hospital, that a bullet in her shoulder might have given her a little perspective. Shown her how unhealthy her tendency to go off half-cocked at the mere mention of her mother's case was. Made her value her life a little more.

And he'd been wrong, wrong, Capital-W Wrong.

If anything, it only pushed her further down the rabbit hole. Before Saturday, there was still _some_ sense left in her quest. It was unsolved. They had yet to connect all the pieces. Montgomery hadn't gotten them shot and had his attack of conscience yet.

But now it was more or less over. The investigative part, for them, was more than over, it was actively forbidden. The rest was up to the legal system to deal with, for the courts to try, for the public and private sectors that Bracken had his tentacles in to cut them off at the source and weed out the stragglers. It'd probably take years, for all the little operations to be ferreted out and squashed, even long after Bracken himself went to prison.

And yet she fought tooth and nail to run back into it. For what? What could possibly be accomplished by continuing to work the case behind the department's back? She was under imminent threat and hadn't even started on the physical and mental recovery she was going to need before being any use to her job again.

Castle sighed and rubbed his temples, feeling very old.

The cab he shared with Esposito pulled in a few blocks from his loft (don't draw them right to your doorstep). Castle hastily handed a few bills over to the nervous cabbie, who'd spent their entire ride not focusing on traffic in favour of glancing warily at Espo's badge and gun. Walking the remaining distance was an exercise in emotional control.

_Stop looking around like that. Don't jump when the washing machine those men are about to drop makes a loud sound. That guy just had a lousy attitude; just because he gave you a bad look doesn't mean he's one of them._

Esposito eyed him knowingly, but wisely said nothing.

* * *

If looks could kill.

The stony-eyed girl glared at the back of his head as they wound through the suburbs and farmland of New Jersey. She held it even as the pine barrens fell away, replaced by the rolling hills dotted with the old mining towns of Pennsylvania. Any attempts at conversation or comfort were shut down with silence.

He thought Beckett's reaction was explosive, but it was nothing in comparison to the fight with Alexis. There may have been someone a mile away who didn't hear her. His ears were still ringing. She – _his mature, responsible, nearly-perfect daughter – _threw a temper tantrum highly unbecoming of an almost-17 year old.

He could sympathize with her, having moved schools far too many times in his own youth; he knew how hard starting over was. He knew it was short notice and she was still reeling from the shooting. And for a moment, Castle nearly relented. Until, that is, the memory of Ryan and Esposito laying crumpled and soaked and beaten came back to him. If he and Beckett had been a few minutes later, or if their ruse hadn't sufficiently distracted that guard (or if the ruse had distracted her as much as it had distracted him, for that matter; _oh no, Castle, don't go down that road again while your pissed-off daughter is in the car_), the two other detectives would surely have been killed. For information, for knowing too much, hell, just to send a message.

No, she was going.

But that didn't mean he had to be a jerk to her, even after her earlier fit. He made the mistake once of not being honest with her about the gravity of a situation, when he sent her away with her grandmother during the bomb case. In that instance, his attempts to protect her and spare her from the truth had resulted in days of lingering distrust and fear.

With as little elaboration as possible, he took a deep breath as they passed through Wilkes-Barre, and told her why – the whole ugly truth.

It proved his second gargantuan misjudgment of the day. Rather than being placated by the information, Alexis blew up all over again, now panic added into anger and sorrow.

"Why couldn't you have just stuck with writing, dad?" she screeched. "You're not a cop!"

"No, I'm not," he agreed tiredly, having already had this conversation one times too many. "But I'm involved, and I got involved on my own free will, Alexis. I didn't know the can of worms I was opening when I did it, but that's not the point here. The point is, there is a situation now that is beyond my control, and I am dealing with it in the best way I know how. And I'm sorry you have to suffer for it, but it is what it is, and I'd rather have you hate me for a little while than have you... than to see you hurt for my decisions, whether they were the right ones for the wrong reasons or the wrong ones for the right reasons, or any combination thereof."

"You could have stopped! You could have stayed home on Saturday and let Beckett go by herself!" Alexis fired back.

Castle took a moment to rein in his emotions. He was playing with fire, the question he asked, but before he left her off at school, he needed to know for sure what he was dealing with. She needed to know what he was dealing with, for that matter.

"And what do you think would have happened, Alexis, if I had stayed behind?"

That stopped her in her tracks. Glancing in his rearview, he could see her expression shift, see her finally come off the anger, only for it to be replaced with the same dreadful understanding he carried all the time now.

"She would have gone anyway, and she would have... she would have died if she found that man."

Bingo. He nodded; glad she was working some of this out for herself. He decided to feed her a little more.

"Alexis, I had to use deadly force against that man, Lockwood. Some of the night is still a blur, but I remember that part clearly. He surprised us and we surprised him, but he only grazed her at first. I was already down, hit in the chest. She could have gotten him before I did if she was running at normal capacity, but she froze up."

"But she's a cop, she knows better!" Alexis cried.

He made a low, assenting noise in his throat. "Yes, she does. But knowing and doing are two different things. She always loses her head, when it comes to this case. She charges in blazing saddles, but the moment she's actually confronted, she ends up nerfed in situations that she could easily handle otherwise. I knew something was wrong when Montgomery called her in. I had to go. The possibility of a confrontation, and knowing how she reacts when her mother's case is involved, I tried to stop her, but she just _wouldn't listen,_" his pushed higher and broke with anger and fear and frustration and he was getting too emotional. He had to pause to regain control.

"I'm not a cop, honey, but I'm not just a writer any more, either. And I have a conscience. I wouldn't let a stranger charge into a situation like that alone, let alone Beckett. Not with the knowledge I had, not if there was the possibility that I could do something to change the outcome."

Alexis remained quiet for a long while as she processed the information and tried to come to terms with it, equal parts frightened, sad, and shocked. She was softer than before, a little closer to understanding and a lot less wrathful, when she finally responded.

"Dad," she hesitated.

Castle heard the question in her throat before she even put her small voice to it.

"Do you love her?"

* * *

After depositing a tearful but slightly more accepting Alexis at school and helping her settle into her room, Castle set about the next phase of his plan, alone at last. He doubled back to Wilmington. Parking the Mercedes that Martha typically drove in a park-and-ride next to the Amtrak station, Castle wasted no time seeking out a temporary replacement.

"Okay, Mr. Rodgers, everything is checked out for you," the eager clerk chirruped. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you the selection we have..."

Castle indulged the boy, who didn't look old enough to rent a car himself, as he chattered happily about the merits of the BMW. He took it, sight unseen, just grateful that the young man hadn't commented or raised a fuss when he showed his New York driving license under Castle, but given a bank card reading Alexander Rodgers.

Another flash of brilliance revealed by hindsight, he chuckled. He set up that account and name more than fifteen years prior when he briefly experimented with the sci-fi genre and used the pseudonym to try his luck without trading on the Castle name. His one sci-fi novel failed spectacularly, and he abandoned the pursuit in favour of leaving it to the masters. (And _shit_, he never called Miéville and cancelled poker with him on Saturday night. He hoped being shot was a good enough excuse or that Martha and Alexis had charmed him and all was forgiven, because that guy could beat him up.)

But the account proved useful as his mystery novels took off and his public life became gossip column fodder. He used the name and account on occasion to travel and book hotels without detection. It was perhaps the first time he had ever been thankful to the gossipmongers; their intrusions had unwittingly prepared him for this very scenario, though he hadn't known it at the time.

Back on the road, he stopped in several convenience stores along the last stretch of his journey. Picked up a half-dozen burner phones and time cards, paid cash. In the midst of his panic in getting out of the city, he disabled his smartphone, along with Alexis' and Martha's, and left all three at the loft. He'd need some way to contact Martha (camped out at her friend's for the time being, albeit reluctantly), Alexis, and the boys. So would Beckett. He figured he'd send three of the disposables back with Ryan for him, Esposito and Lanie.

_Hey,_ he thought defensively, to no one in particular. _Already admitted to going off the deep end on the Bourne thing. Might as well go the whole nine._

* * *

It was with a dark sort of amusement that he noticed how Beckett picked the furthest possible room from his own. He purposefully selected the master suite, right off the staircase, hoping that it would allow him to hear anyone on the stairs and alert him to potential distress or trouble. She opted for the small room on the third floor at the opposite end of the house.

Beckett, weakened from exhaustion and injury, struggled with her suitcase up both flights of stairs and to the far end of the house down left hall. It was painful to watch, but he knew better than to try and help.

_Old dogs do learn new tricks after all,_ Castle mused, bitterness lacing through the thought. Sometimes it just took a lifetime's share of bad judgement condensed into a single week for the lesson to sink in.

He waited up another hour, but she never returned. Castle hoped she would come down, eat something, and maybe his brain would work better than it did when she arrived and they could talk. He thought he could apologize again for going over her head, try to make her a little more at ease with him again. Finally, past midnight, he gave up waiting for her. Hauling himself on his aching leg up the stairs to his suite, he took a quick shower and crawled despondently into another unfamiliar bed. At last, the day caught up with him. He was asleep in seconds.

* * *

No one stirred in the house until well past 8 in the morning. When Castle dressed and limped down the stairs, his leg was worse than the night before, but the hours of uninterrupted sleep had done wonders. He rounded the corner to find that Ryan was already awake and was seated at the kitchen's large but tasteful island. The Irish detective looked positively refreshed, compared to his ragged appearance of the night before. Beckett was still nowhere in sight.

"Hey, man," chirped Ryan.

"Mornin'," he greeted. It felt a little strange, sharing this domestic scene with Ryan, but not overtly uncomfortable. He was infinitely thankful, however, that he thought to get dressed and that Ryan had as well. The unwanted mental picture of the two of them having breakfast together in pajamas the way he occasionally (okay, often) pictured himself and Beckett doing the same, put a hell of a damper on his mood for just a moment.

The slight man pointed to the kitchen's unsatisfying small and cheap coffee maker, a cooling pot already on.

"Rummaged through your groceries and took the liberty. Didn't know if you or Beckett would be down first, and I don't know what you're like, but I've seen it when she doesn't get hers and it's not pretty."

Castle smirked in response, knowing exactly what he meant. Yes, the few days that Beckett stayed at _Casa de Castillo_ after her apartment blew up, he saw very little of her, but he was a quick study of what he did see. And a Beckett who went more than twenty minutes into her morning without coffee was a terror. He would go great lengths to avoid encountering that kind of mood from her whenever possible. Though, on occasion, in better times, he could see how it might be fun to poke the dragon and see what happens.

"Thanks," he said gratefully, pouring a small cup for himself, leaving the remaining two or so to soothe the savage Beckett.

As if on cue, he heard the click-clack of her boots on the steps. Already dressed, then, he deduced. Good. No awkwardness.

He thought too soon. Awkwardness was in full swing. There was an overflow of awkward. She arrived in the kitchen and stopped short, glancing from him to Ryan and back again, as if shocked to see them there. _Who exactly does she expect?_ he wondered.

"Morning, Beckett." He tried for neutral, since cheerful made her angry the day before and anything less than neutral might make her worry. "Coffee's on."

Whatever he did, it seemed to finally be something right. She visibly relaxed and he and Ryan exchanged a look that said, _'crisis averted,' _when she greeted them both quietly, but happily enough.

While she was busy preparing her coffee, back turned to him, he allowed himself to enjoy the view her well-fitted casual jeans and forest green t-shirt provided. The whole package was a fantasy come to life to him, but those _legs._ He'd never quite understood why men categorized themselves as leg men, ass men, chest men, before Kate Beckett walked into his life. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate those assets well enough, but no one feature really ever did it for him before.

Now, he might be ruined for life, because no set of legs were ever going to compare to hers. She wore jeans only on occasion to the precinct, and he always knew he was in for a rough day and a very good night when she did. _Jesus_. Two and a half years he'd been staring at those things, he still never got tired of imagining all the things she might be able to do with them.

A sharp kick to his own bad leg delivered instant, blinding pain and made him bite his knuckles to muffle the rather unmanly yelp he couldn't quell. Beckett turned around away from her drink while Ryan looked anywhere but at Castle, feigning innocence.

"Burned my tongue," he lied badly. "On the coffee. It's – very hot." Made it worse. She raised a sculpted eyebrow in challenge but declined comment. The bare hint of a smirk that quirked at the corners of her mouth, and the slight sway she put in her step when she maneuvered back to sit beside him at the counter said it all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan shaking his head in affectionate disgust. _Yeah, you're one to talk, Honeymilk,_ thought Castle.

But getting caught staring was part of their shtick. Always had been. If it made things a little more normal after all that had changed, everything said and done (everything unsaid and unfinished) in the last few days, well, he figured he'd just have to get himself caught more often.

What a cross to bear.

* * *

**Note**: To anyone still sticking with me, thank you. I know these last few chapters have been a little strange and my response has been slow.  
Please take a moment and tell me what you thought!


	7. Chapter VII

**VII : when there's nothing left but me, stripped of charm and subtlety**

The sensation was always the same. Gunshot residue, bits of concrete and rocks and dirt, pressing tiny indents into her hands and covered with a thick layer of sticky bright-red blood. A nightmarish cliché of a metaphor taken far too literally and dreamed into life.

His fingers, coated with more of the same, wind through hers, squeeze strongly at first, then faintly, until they finally fall still waiting for the help that won't come. It never does.

She woke too soon, too late, she always did. Sitting up in bed and peering out the large gable window that overlooked the street, she fought to control the crawling in her skin and the rising panic that screamed in her chest and throat.

Resisting as long as possible, she fought herself, wrestled her impulses in an attempt to beat them into submission and leave her in peace, but in the end, her need to sleep again took precedence. It wouldn't let her rest until she fixed it. Shuddering in the chill of her room, she shook her thin blanket off and hauled her creaking body up again before making her way to the attached bath.

Kate turned the faucet on hot and flinched at the very sound.

* * *

The first five days, she managed to avoid him well enough during the day. Oh, she tolerated coffee and a scrambled egg or cereal in the morning pleasantly enough, even occasionally joking or flirting with him. Wouldn't do to totally shut out her gracious host, or worse, make him more worried than he already was. Keeping him just reassured enough that she won't run that he won't yell for Ryan or Esposito is a daily test of acting and will.

In the evenings, she returned to the house, sat as far away from him and they watched the news together, separately. Castle's predictions were better than either of them had initially expected; the thread pulled by Montgomery sent Bracken's cloak of corruption unraveling so fast that the state and the federal government didn't even know what to make of it. A half-dozen warrants on his immediate business and political associates had already been served, and it was a small satisfaction when Bracken was arrested and charged with the first of a laundry list of crimes. It was only a fraud charge, but it was a start, and it wouldn't be the last.

It's the story of the decade, they said. A man of such public life, power, wealth, running a criminal empire at the table of government, and how nobody seemed to have caught on to it and lived to tell the tale. Until Montgomery, that is.

The media was divided: Roy Montgomery – redeemed hero; or Roy Montgomery, poster-boy for corrupt cops and threat to privacy and security? There was speculation that he was going to turn state's and plead down, or that he was maintaining silence and was in lockdown out of fear of Bracken's reach. Kate heard it all and listened to none of it. To her, he was more than the caricature they'd crushed him into. A friend and a father figure, a liar and a coward. He was simply her Captain, a man of mistakes and virtues.

But Montgomery wasn't the only one they were eager to report on in the Bracken case. At the center of it, the once tragic-but-unremarkable stabbing of an ambitious attorney. A martyr, they said. The catalyst. Kate herself had a mention here and there, but only in the context of the incident with Lockwood and a mention by some simpering Stepford-smiling anchor of how heartwarming it was that the daughter of a murder victim grew up to have a career in homicide. She, her mother, their case, all distilled into a comfortable role. An easier pill to shove down the gullet of the masses. Cut up in pieces all over again to fit the box they needed her to lay in for their story. At least Castle took it from her kindly, at least he loved Nikki Heat and treated the fictionalized version of the case with kindness and respect.

More than she deserved. The razor in her mouth sliced and stitched her shut when she tried to tell him, tried to ask him for what she needed.

And so it fast became a new normal: he'd sprawl on the couch at 5:55 sharp, she'd come in from outside a few minutes later and coil herself in the furthest chair she could find, or stand behind him in the kitchen and watch the coverage of their case from afar.

She would feel the rapier's slash and he would comment here and there on the developments as if it weren't her entire life being exposed for public consumption, a star attraction of the media's despicable campaign of bread and circuses.

She wouldn't respond, and he stopped waiting for it.

* * *

The moment breakfast was consumed and cleared (he insisted on washing while she dried, rather than just trading days to clean up), she made herself scarce, as was rapidly becoming her routine.

It wasn't a terrible one, as far as routines go. Not really. Rehoboth had its own primary-coloured nostalgic charm. Not as commercial as Atlantic City, not as clammy and crowded as Coney Island. There was an easy wholesomeness to it all, a childlike optimism from a bygone era. It seemed a popular spot, certainly more people than she would have predicted for mid-spring. A few crazies even braved the Atlantic to surf what few waves were to be found in late April, and she'd stop to watch them, sometimes for an hour or more, envying their bravado and enthusiasm.

She spent her days wandering around on foot, mostly. Up and down the boardwalk, through the little streets lined with dated hotels and cottages, in and out the alleys filled with shops. It was pointless, but it made her feel like she was doing something. She could almost pretend that she was on patrol, and in a way, she was. She just couldn't do anything about it when she saw a couple of teenagers shoplifting sunglasses or spotted an obviously-stolen car. She found herself reaching for the badge that wasn't there, or quashing the shout, "NYPD," before it left her mouth.

Her first day, she found a creperie that rivaled anything she'd tasted in the city. She couldn't help but go back for lunch on the next day. And the next. And the next. Michele greeted her as if she were his friend now, and didn't even have to ask to know that she wanted nothing to do with the sweet red peppers he usually put on his _crepe Parisian_. He sent her a disapproving look the first time she ordered that way, but she supposed he got used to it and was more excited about a potential loyal customer than he was offended about her pedestrian tastes.

"Katherine!" the head cook called out happily as she approached his little stall in the crowded alley, his transparently phony French accent ringing over the din. "Zo nice to zee you again!"

She put on a smile that she almost felt and greeted him in kind. "Michele. I see you're busy man today."

"Not too bizee fo' you, my dea'h Katherine! Will you try our house special today? Zweet crepe filled with ztrawberry, banana, and hazelnut zpread?"

She shook her head, tempting though strawberries sounded. "Just my normal."

The buckwheat crepe filled with grilled chicken, a few bits of cured ham, and mushrooms was delicious; quick, hot, and just enough for a light lunch. While she waited, she absently watched a couple of nearly white-haired children scurry around the alley, laughing and chasing each other, parents nowhere to be found. It wasn't an unusual sight, out here. It was jarring on her first day, she thought for a moment to worry that all these children seemingly lacking supervision would be easy targets for criminals and maniacs. But in time, she grew used to it and distantly appreciated the carefree picture they painted, one that could never happen the same way in Manhattan.

"Crepe Parisian for Katherine!" Michele bellowed at the window. She reached into her pocket to extract a crumpled $5 as she approached, but he stopped her.

"No no!" he refused. "Ze man in ze black shirt, he say he take care of it! You have many admirers, but he veeery bold, mizz Katherine!" Michele waggled his thick eyebrows at her comically.

Castle. She felt him before she saw him, felt his presence at her side without the slightest touch. It put her on edge immediately; the feeling was so normal at home in the city and yet so completely bizarre and unnerving here.

(It's only when he catches her off-guard at little moments like this that her ability to play it cool goes straight to hell.)

"What do you want, Castle?" her filter abandoned her for just a second. She regretted the result instantly, because when she turned to face him, his expression was still frozen with unbridled delight to see her, like he hadn't seen her a mere four hours ago, like he thought he'd never see her again. How many times would she kick him and watch him come back as if nothing happened?

She couldn't help but soften just a little. He was too earnest now - this new, more subdued Castle she was sharing a house with at night. Aside from a few stares, he had long since stopped outright flirting with her. He didn't tease her as much, doesn't mock her or bait her into anger or tell bad jokes. Sharing a house with him, she half expected he'd try to press the isolation and the proximity to his advantage, try to sleep with her like he used to (she half wanted him to), but he didn't. In fact, their twice-daily meetings were a hard lesson in just how much things had shifted, a reminder more painful than the pull in her shoulder or the slight limp he still tried to hide from her.

Every morning coffee and every evening news update reminded her of what they used to be. How bright he once made her world, how he'd have her rolling her eyes or suppressing a laugh or smacking him lightly on the back of the head when he threw out an insensitive joke about their victim of the week, or went a little too far in their exchange of innuendo. She'd give anything to have that man back, to have her partner back. But of course, here, he wasn't her partner. He never would be again, if she had anything to do with it.

Maybe this was just how he was now. Maybe this new Castle, who respected boundaries and who was all sweet patience and no challenge or fire, was just who he was now. Who she'd forced him to be. It was wrong and awful and unbalancing and she really just wanted the old Castle back. Not this shell who let her hurt him until she couldn't any more and turned the stab of the deceptive, unkind words said in the hospital and her evasive actions since back on herself, where they really belonged.

She took a deep, shuddering draw of air that burned her lungs before facing him, seeing him waiting patiently and pleasantly.

"Sorry, just… surprised to see you," she explained, hoping it was enough.

If Castle was at all offended or put off, he didn't show it. She wanted to scream at him for it, demand to know why he wasn't angry with her. He grabbed his own plate off the stall's counter and strode beside her to the little patio she'd been seated at moments earlier and motioned for her to join him. She sat tentatively, back straight, shoulders squared off, ready for whatever he was going to say to her.

"Surprised me too, actually," he confessed.

Kate raised an eyebrow and examined his face for any signs of deception, but found none. She'd just assumed that he followed her there. She didn't want to think about why that prospect both annoyed her or why she almost wished it were the case instead. Regret washed over her, for snapping at him, for throwing another innocent act of kindness in his face. But he said no more and seemed unbothered as always, and there was nothing else to say, so she focused her attention on her cooling food and tried to force it past the hard knot in her throat.

It was a few minutes before their meals were no longer a plausible enough excuse to keep from talking or looking at each other.

"So," Castle started bluntly, but not unpleasantly, "gonna tell me why you've been avoiding me?"

It both was and wasn't the question she had been anticipating since the first morning. She expected it to come up, but not like this. Not so easily. In the heat of the argument carried over from the one in the hospital that she could feel brewing every day, but which never materialized? Yes. In the moments he hovered too close when they did the morning dishes and didn't ask about the growing red patches between her fingers and the cracks around their edges, just eyed them worriedly? Possible. But not here. Not so… casually.

Caught off guard, she didn't have time to prepare her defense. The truth accidentally spilled out before she could edit it into something neater or more pleasant that wouldn't make him give her that awful look like he was scared he'd blink and she'd be gone.

"Everything is wrong," she breathed, staring intently at the few scraps of mushroom left on her plate. "I just… I don't know what there is to say."

Castle assessed her gently before responding, "you know I'm not forcing you to be here, Kate."

His use of her given name for the first time since the hospital didn't escape her.

"I truly am sorry, for my overreaction, for practically bullying you into coming here. Just say the word and I'll take you back, if you want. I don't want to see you hurt but… if this hurts too, if you feel like it's some kind of cage, that's no way to live either."

Anger rushed into her for a split second. She was about to hurt him again and he was apologizing?

_Oh,_ she berated herself, _I'm an idiot._

"No, Castle, I'm sorry," her voice shook like she hadn't talked in days, and maybe she hadn't. Not really.

"I don't want to leave. Not if you don't want me to, that is. I…"

She _didn't_ want to leave. She didn't want to be here particularly, didn't want to live with the ghost of what they once were, but she didn't want to leave, either. Not if he didn't, too. But she'd have to eventually. Delaying the necessary was cutting into her – a molten stabbing and twisting thing that swelled in her gut whenever she saw his muted smile as he passed her a coffee mug or she caught him staring at her, trying to force some semblance of normality.

It would have to be dealt with at some point before they went back to the city. She couldn't let him go back with any expectation of resuming their partnership.

"I'm sorry," she finally finished the dangling thought. "I don't know why I can't seem to do the right thing."

"About what?" His temperate question was meant for both of them. A gentle prod to her to; a donning of armour for himself. He was far too composed for this conversation and she found herself once again wishing for the early version of famous playboy author Richard Castle she met all those months ago, the one who'd joke and make an inappropriate comment and screw things up before she had a chance to do it herself, who'd inadvertently give her an excuse or an out. He grew up at some point, maybe when she wasn't looking.

(Maybe when she was determined not to look; for once not so long ago, looking would have been all too great a temptation to touch.)

"Everything," the word came evasively, without thought, and she hoped he wouldn't call her on it. No such luck.

"Everything?" he intoned neutrally, though she heard the command in the word. _Tell me._

"About… about you. About me. About what we do." It wasn't nearly good enough, but it's what she had.

"What about me and about you and about what we do?" Castle parroted back, and goddamnit why did he have to do that? Couldn't he just let her do this easily?

Out of options, she didn't know what else she could say. No use beating around the bush any more.

"I can't be your partner any more, when we get home." There. Rip the bandaid off quickly.

His eyes dulled momentarily as the dizzying liveliness usually barely contained within them flickered, then roared back to being, the fight finally returning to him after days of dormancy. The last tiny flame stubbornly lighting an entire darkened metropolis; unwilling, unable to go out completely. He was readying himself to fight. Taking a deep breath, she did what she had to and rubbed salt in the fresh cut to make sure he didn't come back for more.

_For once in your life, Castle,_ she silently begged him, _learn your lesson._

"It's over, Castle. Don't come back to the precinct. Not unless Espo or Ryan want your blood on their hands next time."

Fuck. She said too much. And by the look on his face – a swirl of hurt, anger, pity even – he knew it and was prepared to exploit it.

"Okay," he agreed lowly, dangerously, "you win." She didn't like how that sounded; it sounded like the exact opposite of winning.

"You win, Kate. I'm gone. I'm out of your life. What then? You get a new partner? They won't let you work alone, you know that. You get some new charge and you get to teach him how to locate his ass with a toilet seat, or maybe you get paired off with a Good Ol' Boy who'd just as well rather close a case quickly than put the right guy away or figure out why. Fine. You gonna charge off into battle whenever some case gets to you a little too much, reminds you of your mother's a little too much? You think they're going to go with you? If they do, and they end up on the slab, what then?"

"I didn't make you come with me!" she hissed, aware that they were still in public.

His lip curled snidely and she thought he might make a dirty pun for a second before she remembered that he doesn't really do that any more. She kind of wished he did.

"No, but you didn't give me a choice, either," he pronounced, his declaration one of a man laid out too many times.

"You could have –" Castle cut her off.

"Save it. I couldn't let you get yourself killed."

She just didn't understand. She knocked him down and threw him out onto raw and broken glass, and still he kept coming back. Was he a masochist?

"I almost got _you_ killed," she strangled out. "I should have said no to Montgomery or told him I was off for the night or shit, I should have called IA. But I didn't. I almost got us both killed."

The words spilled from her without thought, confession and revelation at once. A sore and shaking hand flew to cover her mouth instinctively. She wished she hadn't eaten anything as it threatened to push past her esophagus and into her wounded mouth.

"Yes," he said, that maddening neutrality putting her on edge. "Yes, you did."

And it was out in the open at last, the truth floating off on the wind and splattered across both their faces for the whole damn world to see.

"And that's okay," Castle sighed. The compassion and forgiveness in his deep, closer-to-normal voice didn't leave any room for the accusation and anger she needed to hear. He should hate her, he had to. Why didn't he? Why wasn't he telling her to get out of his life and never come back?

Castle rose from their little table and chucked their plates into the recycle bin before returning to her side. Without asking, he took her weary hand in his large and warm one, pulling her up gently, far too mindful of her healing shoulder.

"Come on," the writer ordered. "We're going to talk about this at home."

Home?

* * *

**Note**: It might not seem like it now, but I guarantee a happy ending. I'm not a fan of wall-to-wall angst for it's own sake, but well-placed and relevant turmoil is sometimes a necessity, hence the categorization and the rating.

Reviews are much appreciated and help me know where I stand now. If that's in the bottom of the proverbial bin (which after this chapter, I suspect will be the case with some), that's okay.


	8. Chapter VIII

**VIII : will nonetheless remain**

"Come on," he urged her, hoping his voice didn't waver and betray the fear that she'd pull away and run, "we're going to talk about this at home."

Watching Kate shut down around him, after the first morning that seemed so promising at the time, was a waking nightmare. Gentle pushing made her shut down. Pretending everything was fine made her shut down more. He didn't know what other option he had left to get through to her, to bring her back, besides direct confrontation.

Granted, doing it in a public café probably wasn't winning him any points with her, but it was an opportunity and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to take it. Not when it presented itself so readily.

His hand closed lightly around her rough and worn fist, balled up in refusal to pull her fingers through his. They walked down the boardwalk towards the rental and the thought occurred to them that for all the times he'd imagined walking around in public, hand in hand with Kate Beckett, this was probably the most disappointing fantasy-come-true he'd ever lived.

Determined to rearrange them back to something good again, he tried to ignore the hurt when she made a feeble attempt to jerk away from him. As if his hand were some kind of leash to be escaped, as if she didn't know she could easily do so should she want to. It gave him hope that she wasn't completely opposed to his presence, or to his insistence they work it out together, and was just struggling for the sake of it, to know she could.

It felt strange to be exercising the same kind of mental coaching regarding Kate that he'd learned many years ago with Alexis, whenever she would lose her head or give him the cold shoulder over some momentary, minor rift in their relationship. _Don't take her anger personally,_ he chanted internally_._ Kate was no child, of course, but she was hurting, too badly to know or care that she was hurting everyone around her.

(_Would you stop if I told you my chest locks up and my heartrate spins out of control every time you leave for the day_?)

She didn't know that it took everything in him to not leave his bed when he heard her getting up all night, cleaning some imagined stain off her hands, or to not soothe and kiss the sores he saw growing on them in the morning.

(_Would you stop if I told you I moved the bed away from the window, and I'm slightly scared to leave the house sometimes, and I sleep with a light on now_?)

Her father called him on day two of their trip, worried about her lack of contact. Martha and Lanie both called on day three. Ryan and Esposito were hovering brothers from afar, calling and emailing his temporary disposable account, asking for updates constantly. Even Alexis was concerned; enough to ask after her each time she got a precious few minutes to call from school.

It was disappointing and nerve-wracking that he couldn't tell all these people that loved and cared, that she was doing better. It would be a lie, a lie they didn't deserve and he couldn't tell convincingly even if he tried. If anything, each day she became progressively worse, progressively more comfortable in the role of this hollow phantom occupying Beckett's body.

When at last they reached the rental, Castle stopped short of the porch and considered his options for a moment. The living room had bad associations for her, watching the Bracken fiasco unwind every night there. His bedroom was out of the question. The porch was too public, her room far too intimate. No bedrooms at all, in fact. Finally, he led her through the front door, up the first flight of stairs, and off to the left hall, to the room he'd been using as his office. It contained a desk, a few bookshelves, a large window, and a small leather couch. Quiet, small, comfortable. He still felt in control there, and as far as he knew, she'd never been in there, so it probably wouldn't put her on the defensive right away.

He left the door slightly ajar, giving her an invitation to escape should she want it, before pulling her over to the small couch opposite the cluttered desk and settling down next to her, not touching besides her hand, yet deliberately pushing into her personal space. He knew he had no chance of making this last-ditch attempt with her work if he was a comfortable distance away, their usual borders would go right back up and he'd lose any progress he'd made thus far.

At last, he rebooted their conversation and prepared to deal with the fallout, whatever it was.

"Talk," he said simply. "Tell me what's going on."

Kate sat mutely for some time, her free hand picking at a stray thread on her shirt, her face cycling through an array of micro-expressions he had difficulty identifying. Just as he was beginning to think she wouldn't talk and he would have to prod her again, her features began to tremble slightly, screwed up as if in physical agony, and he knew she would break any moment.

"I almost got us both killed," she quaked, repeating her words from earlier, this time with remorse rather than surprise. The solemn note in her voice as it creaks makes him want to pull her closer, hold her close, tell her it's okay and he'll love her no matter what. But that's not what she needs. She needs to know she's forgiven, enough to forgive herself. He forges on, and it's killing him to keep his head.

"Yes," Castle spoke evenly. "And you understand why now."

"I don't," the remark was half defensive and half confused. "I… it's my life, Castle. This investigation, this case. I don't know how to live without it."

_Ahh, so she does understand_, he thought.

He tried his luck and pried at the fist still enclosed within his own, and found no resistance.

"You're more than your mother's murder, Kate. You're more than a detective."

Her tear-filled eyes closed, unable to find anywhere to look that was comfortable, he guessed.

"Am I?" she asked, "I've been living with this for so long… I don't even know who I am if I'm not a detective. Before that, I was Vice, investigating the case on the side. Before that, the academy, going through the motions to get where I needed to be to investigate. Before that, college. I spent almost every spare minute I had in the library, looking up cases, criminal psychology books, medical examination, law."

Kate took a breath at last, sucking air deep in and holding it to her lungs.

"I've spent 12 years of my life with this case. And now it's just…"

"Solved," Castle finished confidently. "It's over, it's solved, and the man responsible – and everyone else associated with it – is being brought to justice. You did this, Kate."

"I didn't. Montgomery-"

"Montgomery broke it; put the last piece of the puzzle in. But you pushed. You made sure it wasn't just relegated to the cold files forever, you investigated, you and I and Espo and Ryan, we forced Bracken's hand and forced him to give us enough rope for Montgomery to hang him with. If he hadn't sent Lockwood, none of this would have happened."

"Exactly!" Kate exploded. "I had to keep pushing, I knew it was going to bring trouble after we connected Coonan to the whole thing. Espo and Ryan were _tortured,_ we were shot. It never would have happened if I'd just left it alone."

Her capacity to blame herself was endless, Castle mused sadly.

"And the case never would have been cracked, and Bracken never would have been outed as the nasty piece of work he is. And all the people he hurt – the victims, the families of his victims left wondering or never knowing the truth, the people whose lives he's destroyed and controlled with his blackmail and dirty businesses – they would have lived possibly the rest of their lives not knowing why, having no relief. I've told you, Esposito has told you, Ryan has told you, Montgomery has told you – we all do this and accept what comes with it for a reason. If taking Bracken down isn't enough, I don't know what is."

Finally, she looked him in the eye, the first time in days.

"I didn't have to go after Lockwood that night."

_Aaaand we're back on this again,_ he grumped internally. He was so tempted to go straight to soothing her, so tempted to try and comfort her again, but he knew he had to keep pushing if he was to make any real progress.

"No. You didn't. But you did, and it was a mistake."

"A mistake that almost got us killed," she mumbled bitterly, as if saying it enough times would finally make him as angry at her as she was at herself.

"I know. It was a bad one," he pulled her closer at last, nearly on his lap, and she didn't resist, "but it's in the past. And it wasn't yours alone. Montgomery exploited you, to try to save his own ass at first. I didn't try hard enough to stop you; hell, I've enabled this for too long, I knew you were spiraling again and I didn't want to get on your bad side, for my own selfish reasons… I had a hand in it. You know it was a mistake, a dangerous one, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you it wasn't, but it's not something you have to beat yourself up over forever. You won't do it again, I know you won't."

She looked at him as if she couldn't quite trust his words, as if she was afraid he had too much faith in her, faith she clearly had lost in herself. Castle took the risk and delicately cupped her face with his free hand, forcing her to look into his eyes, even while the pad of his thumb traced little circles on her soaking cheek.

"You don't throw a whole life away just because you made a mistake. It doesn't undo all the good you've done; in fact, it pales in comparison," he said, conviction flowing through him. "Nor does it hinder all the good you can do, now that the albatross around your neck is gone."

"I don't know how you can forgive me," Kate whispered.

Castle took a deep breath, steadying both of them before answering: "You're looking at a guy whose life - up until a few years ago anyway, and still sometimes since - has more or less been a lesson in bad judgment, one screw up after the next, with a few unexpectedly good calls thrown in for variety. If there weren't a lot of forgiveness thrown my way over the years, including from you," he thought back to the mercy she showed him after the summer, after he'd re-opened her mother's case and still wondered at her own ability to forgive, "I'd be all alone. And so would everyone else in this world."

The moment she let it all go, he felt it, both physically and somehow mentally. She dropped into him, boneless, cradled in his arms like a child. He shifted around to accommodate her, careful not to trap her in the process.

As they held each other together in the early afternoon sun, it occurred to him that it was perhaps the most intimate thing he had ever experienced. He could hardly breathe for the feeling of her pressed against him, his chest and lungs tight with emotion rather than fear and panic, for once.

The vulnerability was startling; of being completely open to someone else, of telling her all he had and trusting her quivering hands not to break him with the knowledge.

She didn't. Kate sobbed into his collar for a while, but eventually it slowed; her trembling stopped; and she went still at last. Eventually, her breathing evened out and it too slowed, only in sleep.

* * *

In the morning, he woke up cold in his bed, missing her. Even if he'd only held her once, for a few hours, it was enough to know he was ruined for life if he couldn't wake up with her like for real that some day.

His senses checked in one by one, and distantly he heard her up and moving around, the faucet on again. Castle hesitated for a few minutes, but it seemed to go on and on. Finally, he could take no more and slipped on his shirt and a pair of flannel bottoms over his boxers. Striding up the stairs carefully, he knocked cautiously on the bathroom door.

"Kate?" he called gently. The water stopped, but he heard no movement for a long moment.

At last she opened the door and the sight of her hit him in the gut, a low punch hard enough to double him over, were he not so focused on her. Bleary eyed, hair a wild mess, her tank top wet from standing over the sink so long. Her damp and cracked hands quivered, one on the doorknob and the other bracing her on the counter.

"Please, don't," he pleaded, though he knew it was easier said than done. The compulsion was probably equally as difficult to resist for her as the new found preoccupation with checking doors and windows was for him.

Not knowing what else to do, Castle held his own hands up, rotated them back and forth.

"See? All okay," he said. He must have done something right, because she took a tentative step toward him, touching her fingertips to his palms and exploring them mindlessly. Together they stayed, barely touching, listening to the frogs and crickets outside starting to wake up. They stood on either side of a literal and psychological threshold; something neither could quite describe or put word to.

The morning light began filtering through the windows and hallways and the moment dissipated like a lifting fog. Wordlessly, Castle walked away to go dress, and she went back to her room for another hour before they met again in the kitchen, started their day anew with coffee and omelets.

(The faucet didn't run again at night.)

* * *

The following days were a mostly-happy blur, a dreamlike state of ease and newfound closeness that Castle relished. Both healing, they spent much of their time together. While they never found themselves as physically close as the afternoon in the office, Castle found her much more open to him none-the-less: a charming blend of her old snarky, whip-smart, legendary tease Detective Beckett self, and a newer, more-vulnerable-and-stronger-at-once version of Kate.

Just Kate. Not Kate-Whose-Mother-Got-Murdered, not Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD: One Woman Crime-Fighting Machine. Just Kate.

He got her to talk to the boys, Lanie, and her father at last. Difficult conversations, from the little he heard from where he retreated upstairs, but though quieter the rest of the day, she seemed to have found some much-needed resolution.

Together, they wandered around town often during the day, and he grew less suspicious of what lurked around every corner. His nightmares were less intense; his leg slowly stopped hurting all the time. Her range of motion improved with gentle stretching and exercise, and her hands started to heal.

In the evenings, he wrote and she often accompanied him up in his office, stretched comfortably on the couch. Sometimes she just watched, but usually she was eager to help and was uncommonly inquisitive about his process, and about what their fictionalized counterparts were up to while they were so comparatively idle.

He thought it helped her a little, brought back some of her Detective Beckett side, to solve mysteries on paper through Nikki. They wrote together a dozen different cases, potential plotlines, scrapped most of them and laughed about the worst.

But, as good things often do, it all ended one night when he had her read his latest chapter. She was throwing out comments here and there or making suggestions on how Nikki and Rook's latest case ought to pan out, poking fun of his purple prose (he did _not _write purple prose, damnit!) again. She stopped mid-sentence when his phone rang.

Ryan and Esposito, clearly on speaker, greeted him gravely, and his expression must have changed, because Kate looked up from his manuscript worriedly, bracing herself.

'_There's been a development,'_ Ryan said cautiously.

"I'm listening," Castle tried for neutrality, not wanting to alarm his companion any more than she already was.

'_There was a break-in at your loft,'_ Esposito took a nervous breath, _'they sacked the place. Looking for something I'm sure, I don't know what…'_

His head reeled. Esposito was not one given to creative license.

"When you say 'sacked…'" he let it dangle before switching the phone to speaker so that Kate could hear. When she looked at him worriedly, he mouthed 'break-in at loft' and she appeared to relax slightly with the knowledge that no one had been hurt.

'_Sacked, man. I'm sorry. It looks like a bomb went off. I guess it happened two nights ago, we just got the report from robbery today. We sent a couple of uniforms over to Beckett's to check on hers, it's clean so far, either they were looking specifically for something of yours, or they haven't gotten around to hers yet.'_

"Do we know it was… someone connected?" Kate asked, and the boys paused for a second, perhaps surprised he'd choose to share the conversation with her or that she was close by enough that late in the evening.

'_Hey Beckett,'_ Ryan finally greeted cautiously, _'we're pretty sure. Would have to be a pretty big coincidence. I mean, there was no calling card, but it was all professional and there was nothing of value stolen as far as we know. They took your home computer, went through desks and drawers, potential hiding places for anything. Everything else was disturbed, but left there, so we can rule out robbery as a motive.'_

Castle felt a flash of vindication in spite of the blow of the news of the invasion into his home, his sanctuary. Martha, in her worry, and Alexis, in her anger, had both called him paranoid when he removed the harddrive out of his main PC and brought it with him, along with the many flash drives and recorders he kept around the house. Most of them filled with notes and interviews collected over the years. One, however, was what he had his bets that they were looking for. Tucked into his travel kit in the case that usually housed his shaving razor was a tiny purple flash drive containing the Beckett file he had compiled over the past year. He had spent many hours since their flight from the city wondering what to do about it, ultimately deciding to turn it over to the state when he returned, on the off chance it had information Montgomery hadn't covered. Looked like he'd have to do it sooner than he thought.

Castle sighed and rubbed his temples, suddenly feeling tired and drained as if the life had been sucked from him. "Alright, I'll… Thanks for telling me. I'll figure out something. Is it secured now?"

Esposito replied, _'Yeah, they got it boarded up and there's a few uniforms hanging around now.'_

"Good, good."

'_There's some better news on this front, actually,'_ Ryan started, trying to move the conversation, '_One of Bracken's thugs got caught trying to transport military-grade assault weapons, all from the Afghan army supposedly. His underlings gave him up and squealed now that Bracken's not directly in charge. Guy's calling himself Froman, but there's no record of him, same as Lockwood. He's squealing on Bracken, so, add that to his list of charges_.'

"That's great, guys," Beckett said happily, "maybe they'll have some info on the break-in."

'_Maybe,'_ commented Ryan.

"Thanks for updating me," Castle replied after a stilted silence. "I'll call you back in the morning I guess, gotta figure out what to do, what to tell Mother and Alexis, for that matter."

The team said their goodbyes and he and Kate exchanged looks of understanding. Their little bubble had burst, just like that.

"We've got to go back," she mumbled.

He knew she was right. He wanted to protest, say they could just say, 'screw it' and live here or somewhere else or a little cabin in the woods, for all he cared, as long as they were together. (And they weren't even really that.) But this wasn't their world, and that easy ending wasn't to be.

"Yes. Yes, we do."

Their real world - good and bad, joy and suffering, their past and their future - was waiting back in the city. It was time to face it again, and they were both finally strong enough for whatever they might find; strong enough to go back to the fight.

* * *

**Note**: I originally planned this much differently, to explore them while still away. Alas, they had other plans it seems.

Thank you for reading, please take the time to review if you can spare a moment.


	9. Chapter IX

**IX : the harvest will be hard**

Not enough time, Kate mourned. Not enough time for them. Two weeks prior all she could think of was escape, getting back to the city, getting back to the job and throwing herself back into the fight. Now, the idea seemed nothing but foreign to her.

The remorse and guilt over the shooting, and her reaction to Castle in the days that followed, still washed over her in her quieter moments. But he was never far behind; never too far to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder or link his arm through hers and take a stroll. Or he would distract her. Sometimes, they'd play chess or cards. She'd try to teach him how to play guitar, though he was hopeless and every second of his playing was awful and she loved it. Or he'd coax her into a sparring match. He was significantly less hopeless at that; she supposed he had learned something off Esposito in their occasional sessions, or his fencing skills weren't all for show after all.

In their little shelter away from the world, time didn't pass the same as it did in the city. In the city, life was a mere collection of moments, one right after the other, no pauses, no slowing or stopping. And she loved that – fed off it, thrived on it, as she suspected Castle did as well. But a break from it was nice, something she didn't know she needed until she had it. Time out there at the beach, it was a fluid thing: fast, easy, happy days interrupted only by the occasional call from the real world. Not all perfect, as there were long, fearful nights, but those too came to an end, soothed only by the promise of another morning coffee and another late-night adventure with Nikki and Rook.

Castle never spoke of their afternoon in the office, never pushed her again, but in the days that followed, she found herself watching him more carefully. She saw the old Castle - her sometimes-juvenile always-dynamic partner - come back to existence. His eyes still darted around at an unexpected sound, and he still constantly scanned the crowds when they were out and about, but slowly, surely, he began to return to himself.

He made stupid puns again. His writing became… well, good, again, after a few days of their new-found peace. He roped her into watching all fourteen glorious episodes of a space western TV show he had a fondness for, and then balked at her insistence that they watch her own long-held secret favourite show: Nebula 9. The author proceeded to get sucked into it himself, though mostly because he enjoyed pretending he was on MST3K and provided a running commentary that was equal parts offensive to her inner-fangirl, and amusingly accurate from an outsider's point of view.

(She'd barely managed to suppress a nervous laugh and a blush with an eyeroll when he leered at her and suggested she dress up as Lieutenant Chloe when Halloween rolled around. As usual, he had _no idea_.)

And now it was all in the balance. Returning to the city was an inevitability, but she'd somehow hoped their newly re-balanced partnership would carry over. Carry over into their resumed work life, and perhaps – she allowed herself to hope just a little – into something else, once their lives were back to some semblance of normal.

As they approached his car and bid their silent farewell to their sphere of tranquility by the sea, Castle unlocked the vehicle remotely from a distance and waited a moment. Motioning for her to stay where she was, he opened each of the door handles, checked underneath the car, sat in either side of the car, tested the brakes, and fiddled with the radio, before motioning her over.

Some things, she surmised, would be very different when they got back. He loaded their bags into the back, struggling slightly with it until Kate stepped in and rearranged their things to fit in the back of the small car. Castle grinned sheepishly and mumbled something about never being very good at Tetris. He opened the passenger door for her, gently tucking a lock of her windblown hair behind her ear before returning to the driver's seat. The shell of her ear buzzed with the memory of his fingers long after they'd abandoned the fleeting contact.

It was time to head back into the fray.

* * *

Ryan and Esposito arrived at the ruined loft minutes after they did.

Ryan threw himself on Castle as they rounded the corner into the hallway, nearly knocking the larger man down before he returned the embrace wholeheartedly. Esposito pulled her into a hug of his own, and then switched places.

"So glad you guys are home," Ryan chirped. "It's just not the same."

Kate understood perfectly. Time with Castle alone was nice, but without Ryan, Esposito and Lanie, it wasn't ever quite right. Their absence while she was away pulsed at her like a still-aching phantom limb. Returning to them, this happy reunion, was a homecoming, she recognized with some surprise. If only the rest of the Castle family were there.

Esposito gave them an appraising look before exchanging a glance with Ryan.

"Castle, you might wanna prepare yourself," Esposito stated, "it's bad."

Castle tensed, but gave a curt nod. Out the corner of her eye, she saw his hands fumbling around, as if he didn't know quite what to do with them, before finally shoving them in the pockets of his denims. She ached to grab one of them with her own, a gesture they'd become so familiar with over the past weeks, but with Ryan and Esposito watching them so closely, she knew it wasn't the time. Kate shot him a sympathetic look instead, which he acknowledged with a small smile before breathing deeply to steady himself.

Ryan and Espo pried at the boarding that covered the door, the only thing keeping anyone out, as the door handle had been removed. At last, they opened what was left of the door. Kate couldn't stop herself from gasping at the damage.

When she overheard Esposito use the word, 'sacked,' on the phone the night before to describe the state of the Castle home, she thought at the time that it might be an exaggeration. While surveying the damage with her friend and partner, however, she realized that 'sacked' was a gross understatement. It was utter carnage. The furniture was overturned, the bottoms and cushions all cut with the precision of a surgeon's hand, every possible hiding place for anything searched. Several pieces of paneling from the support beams dividing the living room from the kitchen had been stripped off. The kitchen cabinets hung crazily off their hinges, and all of his appliances were strewn about, some of them had even been taken apart. The boys weren't kidding when they said it was professional. No one could know so many potential hiding places and cause this kind of damage in a single night without alerting neighbours if they didn't have some serious skills at their disposal.

Castle hadn't moved a muscle since entering the apartment, frozen with shock, but finally seemed to find his feet and wandered through the remains of the kitchen. His mouth was unusually slow to catch up.

"Wha…" he stammered dumbly, "HOW!?"

Esposito glanced at him pityingly. "Tha's what we said. I'm sorry."

Castle meandered into the office – his sanctuary – and she followed closely. The search had obviously been concentrated in there: books displaced from their shelves and left open, his desk ripped open and all his papers rifled through, the chair cut open just as those in the living and dining room had been. The artwork had been ripped off the walls and glass littered the floor.

Finally, Castle's mind seemed to come back to him.

"Well," he stated, a false brightness in his voice. "I was thinking of redecorating the place anyway. You guys are lucky," he indicated to Ryan and Esposito, who were watching him with guarded expressions. Frankly, Kate didn't blame them. She was slightly worried about her partner's mental state as well, if he was pulling out jokes at a time like this.

"I was going to get you two to do demo for that time you borrowed my car for 'a few hours' and drove it to Atlantic City, but it looks like someone threw in their services for free. How nice of them."

Esposito suddenly looked extremely guilty and went still at the mention of the car, while Ryan tittered nervously. Castle narrowed his eyes in mistrust at Espo.

"What did you do to my car?" he enunciated suspiciously, sounding like a stern father interrogating an errant youngster.

"Nothin'," Esposito bit out quickly. _Too quickly._ "It's all intact and not scratched. I just… may have gotten a few dates with it."

"I swear to god, Esposito, if I have to steam-clean that thing…" Castle left the question hanging, his expression equal parts disgusted and impressed.

"Nah, bro," the detective recovered his courage, then went back for more, puffing out his chest and staring Castle directly in the eye with the spark of challenge. "I already had that done."

Castle's delayed reaction boomed through the ruins of his office.

"You son of a bitch!"

She and Ryan stood on the sidelines and watched the two grown men grapple like teenage brothers. However juvenile, she was appreciative of the distraction. Kate was fairly sure Esposito had been bluffing to bait and distract the author from his distress over his home, or perhaps as a strange kind of guy's way of welcoming him home. But bluffing or not, she knew that the next time she set foot in that car, it would be with a great deal of caution. And only after careful examination of the seats.

They finished their unsettling tour of the ruins formerly known as the Castle loft in Alexis' room. Castle's earlier optimism vanished instantaneously when he saw her bed torn apart like his own and the other two in the house had been, her things scattered all over, her desk and papers and private things strewn haphazardly.

"Shit," the author breathed, hand running over his face as it all sunk in, "shit, if Alexis had been home…"

Ryan offered an awkward pat on the back to him. "We know. But she's safe where she is, right?"

Castle nodded mutely, still struggling to comprehend the state of his home and the possibilities if someone had been home when the perpetrators were sent.

Kate and Esposito exchanged looks of regret, both knowing they had dismissed Castle's actions in sending his daughter away as an overreaction to being shot, at the time. Now, it was looking less and less irrational and paranoid, more justified by the moment.

"Castle… this wasn't a simple search," she realized. "It's overkill. They were looking for something alright, but they didn't have to do this level of damage. This is a message."

Castle said nothing, but shook his head gravely.

Ryan chimed in, "You shouldn't stay here tonight."

"Come stay with me," Kate blurted out.

Castle snapped out of his daze. "It's alright, Beckett, I'll get some temporary furniture-" she cut him off, determined not to let him dig his heels in.

"You'll stay with me, or you can stay with Esposito. Your choice." The irony of it all would be funny in a different circumstance, as it was nearly the same threat he made to her just shy of three weeks prior.

"Your door doesn't even have a lock, and obviously your building's not as secure as you thought. Your mother's safe and Alexis is away at school, you can have my spare room. You… you shouldn't be alone right now."

The offer poured without hesitation from her, without even conscious thought. If asked, she'd say it was simply the right thing to do for a friend in need, but deep down, she was shamefully excited at the possibility of not only repaying some of the kindness he'd shown her, but also of sharing a home with him again. At least for a little while longer. She wasn't ready for their comfortable arrangement at the beach to end. And as terrible as the destruction of his home was, a guilty part of her was grateful at the opportunity it presented.

He opened his mouth to argue, but all that came out was a thin woosh of breath.

"Okay," he sighed tiredly, but gratefully. "Thank you."

She glanced sympathetically up at him before she noticed Ryan and Esposito staring at them with intense interest. She only just had the presence of mind to pull her hand away from its rest at the crook of her partner's arm.

"You sure your place is secure, Beckett?" Esposito asked cautiously. "I mean, you said it yourself, this is a message."

She exchanged a look with her partner and he shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.

"I think it'll be okay," she said, congratulating herself on sounding more confident than she felt, "I mean with two of us there, and I'm armed…"

"Me too," mumbled Castle. Ryan's eyebrow raised fractionally, but Espo seemed to approve.

Taking a last look into the ransacked space, she couldn't help but wonder if Castle would ever feel safe in his own home again. Another casualty of the job that she unwittingly brought – literally – to his doorstep, she contemplated, feeling suddenly morose. The sense of safety that died with her mother in her was almost certainly dead in her partner now as well, and despite his insistence that he chose this way of life, she felt the responsibility come to harden around her ankles like concrete blocks, waiting to drag her into the river again.

* * *

The dread crept in and prickled at the back of her neck as she turned the key to enter her apartment.

Ryan and Esposito did a quick sweep with a bug detector, just as they had at the loft. She expected them to find something, she really did. It was insult to injury, however, when they actually did. Listening devices in her landline, in the hinges of the door to her bedroom, even a third in her kitchen.

The boys implored her to seek alternate accommodations for herself and Castle for the night, knowing her home had been invaded too, and not all bugs were easily detected. She refused, and regretted it the instant they left her and Castle alone to stare at each other in uncomfortable silence.

The lingering feeling of being watched or that there was something they missed invaded her, curled around her and settled into her bones, but for her sanity and Castle's as well, she tried to put it from her mind.

Showing him into her spare bedroom a while after the boys left them, she paced her kitchen absently, wishing he would emerge and distract her again. But he didn't. The inordinate stillness from his room told her he was not sleeping, but rather, waiting. For what, she didn't know, but their time at the beach taught her that Castle was only still when something was bothering him intensely. Even during the night, it was typical for him to move around in bed, to get up every so often and pace or drink water or scribble some thought down in a notepad he kept at his bedside. It was only on their worst nights at the beach that he went still. The total silence from behind the door made her certain that he was lying awake, forcing himself not to move.

Long hours later, she finally made her way to her now-strange bed and fell into an uneasy sleep, plagued by questions and not-quite-banished feelings of something being very, very wrong.

* * *

She stalked into the meeting area like a predatory cat, silent and swift. Her face stony and her eyes glittering lethally, Beckett wrenched the metal chair out and sat down at the two-way booth before she picked up the receiver.

Reluctantly, the man picked up the other end.

"Why did you kill my mother?" Silence. "Why did you kill my mother?" she repeated forcefully. The man said nothing. "Why did you kill my mother?"

"I read in the papers that a fellow named Dick Coonan killed your mother," Bracken said coolly.

"You sent him."

"I have no such knowledge, little lady," the politician simpered. "But you'd better be careful who you throw those accusations at. Might make someone less forgiving than myself think you're up to something you oughtn't be…"

"Why did you kill my mother? Who do you answer to?" Bracken threw his phone down, hanging up.

"Guard!" the man called out, "GUARD!"

Beckett thought it was for the best that today's conversation ended there. She hadn't expected an answer today; rattling his cage was enough and she'd succeeded in doing just that, if the way his watery eyes darted around like a cornered hare were any indication.

She'd be back. She'd break him eventually. She had to. The who didn't matter, the how didn't matter any more. She needed to know _why._ Bracken was well-connected. He could have silenced her mother, discredited her, and ruined her reputation so that no judge would take her claims seriously. Instead, he sent a gun-for-hire to her and cut her down, left her lying in an alley like trash, and took three other people down with her. It was overkill, she knew they were missing something, something more than the simple tale of a corrupt politician covering up his blackmail of a couple of dirty cops 20 years prior. Bracken was down, Montgomery had made sure that no matter what Bracken managed to evade criminal charges on, his career and reputation were thoroughly sunk.

So why murder, when payoffs and cover-ups had worked in the past? Why continue to send his men after them now? Revenge? Retaliation? Preemptive witness intimidation, in anticipation of a trial surrounding the Beckett conspiracy? All equally _possible, _she conceded, but all equally unlikely. The only thing that made sense was that some part – possibly a large part - of the operation was still surviving and thriving, something that extended beyond Montgomery's reach when he exposed Bracken. And obviously, she surmised, something they unwittingly had information on. Or at least, Bracken and his crew _thought_ they had information on.

With her head held high and a resolute step, she left. It was only once safely out of sight in the parking lot that she choked on a sob and stumbled – uncaring of how it looked to anyone watching – into her partner's waiting arms.

"Shhh…" he soothed. "Don't think on it any more right now. We'll come back next week. Don't give him any more of your time than this."

She'd try. She promised him, she'd try.

* * *

**Note**: I'm sorry this took so long. I struggled to write this one (and I think it shows; not happy with this at all but it's what it is now) and life got way too real for a while. But I do have the next few chapters outlined, so there shouldn't be quite as long of a gap between posting for a while!

Please take a moment to review if you can. Comments, questions, concerns and constructive criticisms always welcomed.


	10. Chapter X

**X: but sacred are the scars**

Castle felt the unhappiness creep into them on the first night he stayed with her, on their first night back in the city. By the third, it was unbearable, suffocating to be near her when they were alone. The days? They were alright, busy enough, with Castle visiting his mother and making headway on fixing the loft while Beckett... did whatever Beckett was doing. Besides her visit to the prison, he'd scarcely seen her. Nights were for stilted conversation and painful loneliness. They'd lost something only just gained in the first place, both unsure what it was they were mourning.

They were drifting apart again and Castle had no idea how to fix it. It was so different, in her apartment, surrounded by her odds and ends, than when they'd been away. They contentedly shared that space in the rented home. New, neutral territory for both, they had worked out an easy rhythm. It was comfortable, happy.

But as he stood in front of her old farmhouse sink late on that third night, Castle was the furthest thing from comfortable.

"The uh, the dish soap is in the cabinet above," Beckett stammered, snapping him from his melancholy thoughts, "I told you, you don't have to-"

"Knock it off," he groused, harsher by far than he felt, "I'm crashing here and the least I can do is dishes."

Beckett looked hurt and wrung her hands (he still instinctively eyed them whenever she moved them) but allowed him to continue washing. Castle sighed.

"Sorry, sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean it like that, just, I have to..."

"Do something, or you'll go crazy?" Beckett filled in with a washed-out smile.

"Yeah."

"I know the feeling." He was sure she did, but equally unsure of what to do or say to her, here, so thoroughly in her own space. Feeling as much intruder as he'd felt intruded upon in the wreckage of the loft, he longingly thought back to the day just over a year ago when he'd stubbornly insisted on staying in her apartment to protect her from a serial killer. He'd felt quite at home then. What had changed so much?

After the first tense week in the beach house, their camaraderie and ease with each other had only grown. Focused on healing and friendship at the time, he had successfully distracted himself from the other, decidedly less innocent feelings he had for her and she ignored whatever she felt – if anything – as studiously as ever. They joked and teased each other occasionally, but in the wake of the Bracken exposure and their fragile physical and mental states, the typical spark between them had lain (mostly) dormant back there in their bubble.

Mentally, he took inventory of the circumstances, each time they'd been alone in one-anothers' homes in the last year. Cause and consequence and conduct.

This time was different than the serial killer case, where imminent threat and the constant calls of Ryan and Esposito had proved sufficiently distracting and enough to keep them from focusing too much on each other.

Definitely different than when she'd stayed at the loft for a week after her apartment blew up; there and then, the convenient redheaded buffers were almost always in place. And work had always proved a quick escape and distraction.

Ah, he thought, that was the difference. Being alone, with Beckett, in her apartment, back in the city, preparing to head back into the fire again. No training wheels.

Castle helped her with the dishes and scrubbed in tiny, precise circles on her white porcelain while wondering if she felt as uncomfortable with him there as he felt being there.

"So," he started, unable to take the silence but unsure of where he was going. He settled for the first thing that came to his mind. "What did Iron Gates say today?"

Beckett stiffened beside him, clutching the bowl still submerged in the hot water.

"She said she's not happy about, and I quote, 'the kind of ship Roy Montgomery was running,' and that she has no patience for civilian consultants."

Castle's heart plummeted, a 20-storey free-fall.

"But," Beckett forged on awkwardly, "she also said that – and she was not happy about it – that your position is secure there, if you want it, thanks to the Mayor and the Chief. High department closure rates since you started hanging around don't hurt either. She's… a results-oriented woman."

"And…?" he prodded, sensing there was more to it. Beckett rolled one shoulder and winced as she did it.

"She wants to see you tomorrow morning, if you still want to… I understand if you don't, Castle. You've been through a lot, and I don't know if it's such a good idea for you to come back."

It was like a slap in the face, an icy stab to the gut.

"Not this again," he growled forcefully. "Look, Beckett, if you want me gone, fine, say so. I'll go to another department, or consult in some other way, you won't have to see me-" the detective tried to cut in, but Castle kept going.

"I told you once and I'll tell you again, I'll find another way in. Maybe it took me longer to find what I was supposed to do with myself than it took you, but I can't leave now. I have a while to go yet."

Beckett set her dishes down and faced him, her expression an odd mixture of irritated and aggrieved.

"Do you know what Gates asked me?" her voice hissed out, dangerous and hurt and vulnerable all in one.

Castle shook his head.

"She asked me, 'how long have you been sleeping with him?' when I defended your importance to the department. I defended you, Castle, and you're…" she sighed stopped mid-sentence, unwilling or unable to explain just what he was. Beckett rolled her head back, neck making a sickening pop, "I just thought you might want some time to deal with your family and your home, and I could deal with Gates myself."

"What do those two things have to do with each other?" Castle exploded, his emotions finally taking over his sense as he tried to figure out where she was leading with the first part and what possible connection it had to his family. Unable to make sense of it, he was already to the point of no return and settled for just trying to keep his voice down instead of controlling the words that came stumbling blindly out of his mouth.

"So Gates thinks we're together, big deal, so do a lot of people! You and I know the truth," he spat, and it came out far more bitterly than he hoped it would, but he was on a roll and damned if she was going to stop him now.

"My family is _gone_. Mother is terrified of coming back to the loft, Alexis is staying where she is by choice, I'll get a weekend with her around Memorial Day. If she doesn't make plans without me, that is."

Beckett looked at him with surprise but made no attempt to interrupt again, so he continued, letting out a shaky sigh.

"I talked to her this morning. She said she was going to finish the semester out, her grades would never recover another transfer back and I know that's for the best, but now she wants to stay up there for their camp thing and she's made friends and now it's all she'll talk about and things seem to have fizzled out with her boyfriend with the distance and…" he trailed off, shaking his head, the day finally catching up to him.

"I just want to get back to work and find something normal again." Good. Back in control. Safe topic.

"Castle," Beckett said, her voice soft but commanding, "you can't use work to avoid things."

A hysterical noise halfway between the taunting caw of a crow and a sputter burst from him unbidden. Not good, not back in control. In fact, he was the furthest thing from control, and it only took her five seconds to undo it.

"I think I've pointed out enough examples of the word irony used properly and improperly over the years. Perhaps you can figure out what that statement fits under."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she shot back defensively and her wide eyes blazed into his, defiance boiling in their depths. Castle shrugged and sneered, too hurt and confused to stop. If he gave her any more time – he couldn't let her keep going. He'd just be goaded into revealing far more than she was ready to hear.

"You're the _real_ detective here, you can figure it out."

Castle turned on his heel and headed for the door, needing some air, needing to be away from her before they did any more damage, caused any more disappointment. His mind raced – he'd get a cab, go to a hotel, come back for his bag in the morning with a nice bouquet of flowers and try apologizing for his ungracious exit when he was in more control.

"Castle!" she called after him.

The author kept walking, his leg twinging painfully after being on it since the early morning. His body felt unpleasantly heavy, as if lead weights had been fixed to his limbs, secured around his neck, but he plowed forward, out the door. He couldn't muster the control not to slam it in anger behind him were he to close it, prevent her from following him, so he left it ajar instead.

_Lilies_, he thought. He'd bring her lilies for her hospitality and patch things over so they could part on friendly terms, when he could bear her maddening presence again for a few moments to end it formally. Lilies. White ones. If she wanted to end their partnership, she could have the flowers to go with it.

"Castle!" she yelled again down the hallway. He almost looked back – could it hurt that much to look back? – and almost turned and almost jumped to apology mode there, but his rickety resolve stood. One foot in front of the other, Rick. One foot in front of the other, end it cleanly.

"How far you think you'll get without your shoes, Castle?"

Castle looked down.

Damnit.

Heaving a sigh, he turned and faced her again, his anger cooling to a simmer, replaced instead with fresh humiliation.

"Castle, what's going on?" she asked delicately, approaching him with caution.

Without his consent, his feet followed her back inside, his body following with little coordination, like a marionette, as she shut the door behind him and maneuvered herself in front of it.

"Castle?" Beckett prodded. Her tone wasn't unkind, but it wasn't purely friendly either, and dimly, he recognized it as the one she used on a reluctant witness she was trying to lull into security before she ruthlessly extracted the desired information from them. Not good.

"I'm sorry," he murmured in lieu of a real answer, knowing it wouldn't put her off, but it stalled her and gave him precious seconds to grasp at some power, to calm his swiftly beating heart.

"Not what I asked."

"Beckett, stop."

"No!" she cried and jerked her body, barely stopping short of stomping her foot. She demanded, "tell me what's wrong! I don't even know how we turned this into a fight but we need to get to the bottom of it or…"

Opportunity, he thought. "Or what?" He turned her interrogation onto her, "Or what?"

Silence. She had no answer for him and he had none to provide for her. Her barely visible silhouette, both sharp and exposed, blinked expectantly at him. Her hands splayed flat across the door as she leaned back into it, holding it for support and blocking his exit at once.

"I don't know," she mumbled. "I didn't want this to happen this way."

"But you did want it to happen," Castle bit out miserably, testing her even though he knew it was pouring salt on an open wound. He knew this would happen, that they'd backslide, he felt it in his bones the moment he woke up their last morning away, that leaving that bubble was going to change everything. He'd just never imagined it would be for the worst, certainly not this way, a terrible swift sword.

"I'm going, Beckett. You can explain to Ryan and Espo, if you want."

His words were cruel, unnecessarily so in their use of their friends as manipulation, and he regretted them instantly. And now, here was a lesson he'd learned too many times in his forty-odd years. He knew better and yet he never seemed to learn it well enough – running away from his problems only ever left bigger ones waiting when he came back.

Coming back to the city meant facing Bracken, facing the end of a twelve year obsession for Beckett, facing the redefinition of them, facing everything they feared. Getting back to the city, he knew going into it, would be the first test of them, whatever they were. And it looked like they were already failing miserably.

And whatever problems they were creating tonight would be waiting for him whenever he came back from wherever he was going. Away. It was always a question if when, not if, he realized bitterly. He'd come back until there was nothing left to come back to.

Hearing no further response, he found his shoes by her door and proceeded to retrieve them, studiously avoiding looking at her while he did.

"Wait!" her plea echoed into space and died in the corners of the room. "I don't want you to go."

The anger swelled deep inside him until at long last it boiled over, sizzling on the forgotten fire that blazed between them. Three years of her indecision – about him, about their partnership, about _them –_ narrowed to one horrible moment, one he couldn't stop, wanted to stop, watched it all play out as if it were someone else's hands that shoved her away when she tried to grasp at his arms, someone else who ripped the door open again, someone else who told her to go to hell and figure out her shit before she talked to him again.

"Castle, please," she stammered out, in a voice so filled with what he could only call longing that it stopped him dead in his tracks. "Please, just talk," he recognized her words as the ones he said to her, many weeks ago, when she tried to walk away from him. _God,_ he thought, _is this what we are?_ Too close to walk away, not enough to stay? A permanent state of push-me, pull-you?

His decision was made. Something was going to change, and he intended to force it, her comfort be damned.

"Beckett, either we're partners, or we're not," he said, his voice low and thickly cloaked with unmasked anguish. "Your choice. You decide. If I'm your partner, then you're not going to dismiss me when things get messy. You're not going to give me an out when you don't have one yourself. You're not going to just call when you get stuck. And you're damn well not going to shut me out when you start getting too close to a case, not again. I'm not going to watch you shut down and get yourself killed, we talked about that. I thought... I thought you understood, but if you're still pointing out the exits, maybe not."

Castle took a deep breath and gave her her only two options. "Either I'm in – either I go in tomorrow and deal with Gates and re-sign my waivers and whatever else I have to do, and we go back in together – or I'm _gone_."

Her kaleidoscope eyes widened and seemed to spin with shock, her full lips parted a fraction and her breath came in short, jagged draws, as if she were trying to stop herself from crying. Every nerve in his body was ablaze with something. Anger or fear or the desire to pull her to him and tell her she couldn't leave and to never let him leave her and that everything was okay.

"I need my partner," she stated at last in a strangled voice that teetered on the knife's edge between too high and too soft. "I need _you_."

And contained in that one syllable, she promised him her partnership and asked him for more.

No sooner had Castle cautiously, gently shut her door again, ready to face her and work things out, when she padded softly towards him. A light in her eyes broke through the desolation and the fear, and a small, timid smile quirked at the corners of her full mouth. He knew what she was going to do; felt her closeness and the spark crackle between them. His instincts all screamed _yes._

"No," the author sighed as his hands closed around her shoulders, the word springing from some hereto untapped reservoir of control and sanity. The larger part of him screamed at the indignity of it. Kate Beckett, eyes slid closed, standing on her toes, with her lips centimeters from his own... and _that's_ the word that comes out?

"No?" she nearly whined, equal parts confused and hurt. Oh, that dejected look, if he could just pull her back and kiss her and show her just how much he wanted that and so much more and make it go away...

"Not no forever," he reassured her and himself, letting a hand stray from her shoulder to brush against her cheek. He watched in awe as her eyes halfway closed and she shuddered in delight or relief, he couldn't quite tell. "I... we can't screw this up, Kate. Not again. I'm not in a good way tonight and you're not either. We can't deal with this by falling into bed. Give it some time?"

She seemed to be searching for something – anything – to say, and as he waited patiently, his resolve strengthened. To his surprise, she nodded, her shoulders dropping in exhaustion but her countenance reading acceptance rather than defeat.

And he knew her reply, even before he could read it on her lips and hear it carry on her voice. The word that let him know they would be okay, that they would get there. An oath, a prayer, a promised future.

Always.

His heart beat wildly in its cage when she stepped into his embrace, spinning on one foot to lean into him. Eventually, he allowed himself to relax his tense back and shoulders, to recline back against her door and cradle her.

"We need to go to get some sleep," she said regretfully. He sighed and nodded against her head, tucked neatly under his chin. He didn't want to give it up, this closeness he'd felt only once before, and all too briefly. She gave him a third option.

"Will you..." she _blushed _and asked so softly and innocently_,_ "will you just stay with me?"

As if he could he deny her such a request.

"Of course," Castle breathed. He followed her dazedly when she walked them to her bedroom and awkwardly stood by the foot of her bed while she disappeared into her closet, emerging minutes later in the purple top and blue shorts he remembered from the night he stayed at her old apartment so long ago.

"I'll be right back," he told her, explaining to assuage any fear she might have of him leaving her. He figured it was justified, given their earlier ordeal. "I'm going to get out of these clothes, and I'll be back."

Kate made a curious _mmmm_ sound but seemed happy enough. He hurried through his bedtime routine, brushing his teeth and combing his hair out of its normal shape and into something decidedly less polished. Slipping out of his dress shirt and slacks and into his faded flannels and comfortably worn t-shirt, he took a deep, steadying breath before trekking back across the apartment, giving the doors and windows a final visual inspection as he did.

She spied him hovering in the doorway and patted the space next to hers in her small bed, the sheets turned all the way down in clear invitation. Sliding next to her, he stayed half upright, reclining against her headboard. Kate wasted no time shutting off the remaining light and relaxing into him, instinctively finding the crook of his arm and resting her cheek on his chest.

Memories of a freezer played behind his closed eyelids, the similarities striking, only this time, they'd finally ended the fight that in a way had begun on that day in the radiation tent and never truly ended. The definition of their partnership. The possibility of _them._ Whether he was someone she could rely on to dive into it with her. Whether she could ever let him. When the inevitable would come, and what it would leave in its wake.

Freezer-Castle wrapped his coat around both of them, and Post-Gunfight-Castle tugged her thin blankets over her shoulders, then his own, cocooning them in warmth and security this time, rather than a desperate attempt to stave off hypothermia and not die completely alone.

"Castle?" her voiced jolted into the night, soft as it was.

"Hm?" he responded, absently stroking the arm that wrapped around his abdomen. The silvery pale skin on the underside of her arm was soft, so soft and smooth. Surprisingly, it was cool to the touch, but pleasantly so, and she seemed happy to accept the touch. Not frozen with grief and self-doubt like the last time he held her, not desperate for reassurance. Just content.

"Will you tell me something?"

"Anything," he replied, and he meant it. Lulled by the gentle hum that passed between their barely-touching bodies like radio waves on the air, he'd tell her anything she wanted to know at that moment. Anything she wanted to know and anything she didn't, too.

"Why do you write murder mystery?"

Castle breathed a guarded sigh, letting her surround him, loving it for all its strangeness. It was high time he let her in a little too. He only wished she'd picked an easier question, one with an answer that was clearer to him, but, he would do his best.

* * *

**Note**: Sorry again that this is so late. If you're still with me, thank you, as always. I know this chapter is slow, but this was the only way I could accept this going, after nearly a dozen rewrites.

Comments, questions, concerns, corrections, and constructive criticisms always appreciated.

**ETA**: I noticed some paragraphs were out of order or repeated, not sure how that happened, I hope I've fixed everything but tell me if I haven't!


	11. Chapter XI

**XI: we that are true lovers**

"I guess what it comes down to," his tired voice confessed in a low rumble that she felt spread from her cheek resting against his chest, into the rest of her body, warming her, "is that I like things I can't understand. I mean, I don't _like_ people being murdered, but it's interesting. People do terrible things to each other, especially when no one else is looking. I just don't understand."

"Greed? Jealousy? Revenge? Plain old psychopathy?" she offered, mostly in the interest of keeping him talking. He shook his head.

"No, that's motive. I understand motive. What I don't understand is _how_ it can go as far as it does. How one person could be willing to… just snuff out someone else, for their own purposes? What drives someone to that level? How can they justify it to themselves?"

Kate was mildly surprised when he told her – from what she could tell – the simple and honest truth, when she asked why he chose to write murder mystery, when he clearly had the imagination to write fantasy or sci-fi or that cheesey vampire/werewolf/magic lit that was so popular these days. She expected an elaborate, jewel-embellished story. Perhaps a tale of woe and tragedy from his past, perhaps a dead childhood crush or a murdered neighbor, or even inspiration from being raised behind the stage, in the shadow of an actress, influenced by great tragedies and horror comedies. The truth was more mundane and more marvelous at once and he told her plainly. His simple admission scraped at the mortar of her walls. Another little glimmering shard of Richard Castle crept into her heart and lodged itself there in the quiet corners.

"I don't understand," he continued, offering his mind to her at last, "how people treat each other so horribly, and then go about their lives, business as usual, until we catch up with them. How do you take someone else away? _Killing_ is a necessity. You kill to sustain yourself, to protect yourself, to keep your family and your people safe. It's a basic part of being alive, killing, even if only passively. We kill animals and when necessary, each other. _Murder,_ though," Castle paused, shaking his head again as if in disbelief after all these years.

"I've read hundreds of books, fiction, non-fiction, university texts. I've been with you for 3 years, I've followed CIA agents… hell, Kate, I've interviewed serial killers. They've sat there and told me why they thought it was okay to cut off the heads of teenagers and make the skin from their faces into funny hats. And I still don't get it."

"So you write about it?"

"Mmhm," he murmured, slumping down further into the bed in his exhaustion from the expulsion of honesty and the exertion of controlling himself.

"I write about murder – a manifestation of human evil I guess – because it never stops fascinating me or scaring me. My books all start out as stories I tell myself, to make the world more orderly than it really is. To make it an easier pill to swallow, this lack of understanding. To make sure things have a comfortable ending and good always triumphs over evil."

Hushed, he lay unmoving for some time, though she knew he wasn't done yet. Just stalling for words and perhaps for control. If it was anything near as difficult for him as it was for her, to be so near and not give in to the temptation that simmered and scalded just under her skin, he should surely be worn from that formidable effort alone.

She was shocked when he refused her kiss. He was all too accurate in the assumption – the one she wanted to be angry but couldn't because damnit, he was right – that they'd have ended up in bed if he'd let her continue. Now grateful for his rejection of her advances, she wondered what the fallout may have been in the morning if he hadn't.

When it became clear that his presence at the precinct was not to cease any time soon, some time around the frozen woman case, she'd developed this idea that Castle would jump at any chance he had to sleep with her when (and it was always a when back then) she decided to allow it. And she knew she was probably right, at the time.

The way she'd written it in her head, early on, they'd have a shouting match and she'd shut him up with her mouth and that would devolve quickly into rough, angry sex that he'd revel in and she'd love at the time and hate herself for in the morning. As they grew together, the – _go on, Kate, call it what it is – _fantasy changed. They'd have a hard case and seek each other out at the end of the day, share a cab and go home together and never part again. Or they'd almost die and the need would consume them both, as it nearly had after the bomb scare months earlier, when she'd first realized that he _loved_ her and it scared her to death even as her heart soared with the knowledge. She'd sat up all night, her phone in her hand, twitching to sneak out away from Josh and show up at the loft and give herself to him. In her sillier moments, they'd find themselves stuck somewhere; on a case outside the city, in a hotel room, maybe even in a stalled elevator. Some contrived situation that forced them to be alone and in close, inescapable, maddening proximity to each other. She _wanted_ it to happen to them, thinking, if she were just set on the right path, put up to it by fate or circumstance, she wouldn't have to make a decision. They'd just be there, forced together, and, incapable of standing it anymore, they'd just give in. All somewhere on the sliding scale of plausible. All equally likely to result in heartbreak and disaster as happiness and fulfillment.

They'd almost died, several times. They'd had hard cases. They'd been in tight spots, had opportunities. They lived together for weeks in an isolated house, with no pressures around, and they hadn't given in. For all her fantasies about how it would go between them, she'd never entertained the idea of Castle refusing her advances, never thought of taking things slowly. The Richard Castle she met on a star-studded rooftop would never have refused her.

And there, she thought, was her grave mistake in all of this. The mistake that let her assume that he'd sleep with her at the first opportunity was the same one that had nearly cost her his presence in her life entirely. Holding Castle to the standard of the person she'd met nearly three years prior was woefully unfair to both of them. She yearned to tell him now, how sorry she was, to pass a plea for forgiveness from her lips to his, to make it all better, but it wasn't the time for that yet, and she didn't think her words would go very far anyway. The disassembled and rebalanced _them_ was still too new, and the catalyst wounds too fresh and still seeping. Show. Don't tell.

Feeling his steady breathing beneath her, it struck her again how much he'd changed while she wasn't looking. This Castle insisted on being her partner, her equal, of dedicating himself to a job he had neither obligation nor claim to. This Castle asked her for time, wanted to take things slow. This Castle pushed back and set conditions and demanded to be a participant, not a ride-along. This Castle had snuck up on her. It surprised her, even though she'd observed the changes one by one as they happened and noted them, filed each one away for future reference. Somehow, she'd never added them up – a product, perhaps, of denial or complacency. Call it an inability to see the forest for the trees.

Castle finally resumed his explanation, bringing her back to his present self, more open than she'd ever seen him. For all her walls, Castle had just as many. He just disguised them differently, camouflaged them with a superficially extroverted nature and a shiny, shallow playboy persona that she'd bought into far too easily and for far too long.

"I get interested in a lot of things-" she snorted, he certainly did, "-but they never hold me for long, not once I've figured them out. I guess that's childish, but there are only a few real mysteries. Why people do what they do and why are they what they are, in the best and worst ways? How do we become great or terrible? Why aren't there any blue foods in nature?"

She started to interrupt - "And don't give me that crap about blueberries, they're _purple," _he stressed petulantly and she resisted temptation to laugh at his absurdity. "Why aren't there any bright blue foods?"

"Really, Castle? Blue food, that's your big mystery?"

"Well, it's one of them. Murder. The curious absence of blue food. What makes life meaningful. Whether or not we're alone in the universe. The vastness of space and time. The idea of a soul. Universal truth, if there's any to be found at all. You."

Kate blinked her eyes open, searching his face for what he meant. She felt rather than saw him quirk his mouth up in that aching half-smile he reserved only for her.

"When you called on me at my party, I thought, 'now here's a fresh mystery.' I admit it; you were like my favorite new toy for a while. Something I wanted to pick apart, find out what made your gears turn, play with you until I learned your secrets."

"Why'd you stay, once you knew?" she asked, battling the cringe and the grief that bubbled inside her. He said it himself. He gets bored, picks something apart, and moves on when he understands how it works and why. With her case solved…

Castle chuckled gently, a low vibration that echoed through him and into her. "I'll never know. You're so much more than just your mom's case, you know that? So much more," she felt his nose bury into her messy hair and sighed in happiness, just a hint of heat threading through her, warming her with a promise of what they could be, once they were both whole again, once they found their feet.

"That's why I stay. I'll never figure you out. Every time I get an answer, I have ten more questions in its place. I like that. I like things that have more questions than answers. And some things are better left that way. There's too little wonder left in the world any more, Kate, with easy answers to almost everything at our fingertips," he whispered in a voice that sounded so much like forever. "You're wonder to me."

Her heart palpitated, unsure if she was ready to hear that, yet she grasped to it; dry land in the ocean of uncertainty that still threatened to swallow them both alive. She recalled the changes of the past three years: how he pulled her into the world, out of her self-imposed punishment. Of how much more stable she'd been since he'd come around, of the way he made everything seem so much more vivid with the way he saw the world around him. The way he filled her life with color.

"And you, to me, too, Castle," she admitted quietly, overwhelmed by his honesty that inspired her own. She knew she'd never quite have his way with words, but if the feather-light kiss he brushed to the top of her head were any indication – so light she thought she might have imagined it until he did it again – her stilted admission was enough for now.

"Go to sleep, Kate. I'll be here."

* * *

He wasn't there. Panic shot through her as she woke, attempted to focus her vision. Tumbling out of her bed, she noted the early daylight peeking through her windows.

_Please don't be gone_, she begged internally, as she checked the bathroom. Door open, no sign of him, no running water. Dread filled her as she rounded into the living room, eased only slightly when she spotted him. Well, he hadn't left completely. He was dressed, she noted. And she… wasn't. Suddenly self-conscious, she turned to flee, retrieve some proper clothes, don her battle armor before she could face him again.

"Kate," he exclaimed… happily? He didn't sound mad, or like he was caught sneaking out the door like a guilty adolescent. She chanced a glimpse back at him and was presented with a cup of coffee.

"Can't make any promises about quality," said Castle, grumbling under his breath about inferior machines and cheap supermarket blends.

"Thanks," Kate accepted gratefully as she headed for the refrigerator to fetch the creamer, indecisive about whether or not to ask him why he didn't stay in bed.

"I tried to stay," he answered sheepishly, reading her like a book even while her back was to him, "but once I'm awake, I have about as much success staying in bed as I do when I'm told to stay in the car. It was early, I thought I'd wake you up with coffee, but, you woke up."

"It's fine," she stated primly, mildly surprised that it was. He hadn't _left-_left, so, she was happy enough, and given their new commitment to honesty, she told him. "I'm just glad you're here."

He took a seat at her kitchen island next to her, bumping his shoulder to hers.

"Nowhere else I'd be."

They drank their coffee and scraped at yogurt in silence, not too differently from their routine at the precinct, reminiscent of but distinct from their weeks at the beach. Not comfortable, but not uncomfortable either. Hopeful. Ready.

Castle checked his new phone, reading the news and checking his email. Kate stirred her coffee and sipped occasionally, reflecting on the step they'd taken the night before.

_Not no forever._

The detective part of her wanted to press him for a definition, but a newer, cleaner part of her told her to leave it alone. They were moving forward, together, and she saw no good reason to question that. Things had never been normal between them. They were always a little off, a little out of place, prone to doing things out of order and making it up as they went. Even moving forward, she didn't expect that to change, and honestly? She didn't want it to. If they got there eventually, she found she didn't much care what order they went in.

"When's your meeting with Gates?" she asked.

"9:30," he replied guardedly, as if he were waiting for her to offer him an exit again.

She refused to give him one. "Good. Just call her 'Sir,' and for god's sake do not make any jokes. About anything. She's not big with the humor senses."

Castle laughed merrily with just a shade of relief, "What about –"

"No puns either," she shot him a glare with a ghost of a smile, "and don't talk about your friendship with the Mayor and Chief, or Judge Markway. She's IA through and through and in light of the Bracken fallout, she's more than a little touchy about power and connections. You're probably going to have to pass qualification with your weapon to department standards, since Montgomery didn't test you formally and you've used deadly force. She'll want to have it all documented. But that shouldn't be a problem. She'll definitely bring up the incident with Lockwood, just tell her what you said on your statement, she can't do anything about it, she's just looking for inconsistency."

Castle laughed heartily as she caught her breath, all the information having spilled out in what felt like one long run-on sentence.

"I feel like I'm 14 and being prepared by my mother to interview at the burger place. No, wait. You're much more useful. Who'd have thought reciting the soliloquy from Macbeth would get me kicked out of the interview rather than prove my ability to remember large orders? Philistines."

"Well, she'll be your boss too," she chanced a look to find a delighted smile spread across his face and pull at the corners of his steely blue eyes. "You'll be fine."

"Glad you think so," Castle grinned. "What about you? What's your itinerary for the day?"

She swallowed a bite of her yogurt.

"Department shrink. They've got to make sure you didn't drive me completely bonkers over the last month. Then… I thought I'd visit Cap- Montgomery, later in the afternoon." She paused to gauge his reaction. Neither (to her knowledge) had had any contact with their old Captain since the hospital. His expression impassive, she pressed, trying to demonstrate her willingness to include him, regard him as an equal.

"Do you want to come?"

Her partner's eyebrow raised fractionally as he scanned her for any hint of reservation or deception.

"Okay," he agreed amiably, and said no more, the comfortable silence returning immediately. She finished her yogurt, scraping at the bottom of the cup for the last bite of strawberry.

Kate excused herself, intent on getting a bit of yoga in before her day started. When she emerged an hour later, stretched and clean and fully dressed, he was gone, with a note posted on her refrigerator. _Typical Castle_, she shook her head affectionately. He couldn't leave a simple "went out" note. It meandered and prattled on about going to the loft before his meeting with Gates, ending with a reassurance that he'd be back by early afternoon. All punctuated by a ridiculous smiley face.

Grinning ruefully, she was amazed at the normalcy of it all, like leaving notes in the kitchen was just something they did now. And maybe it was.

* * *

Dr. Addler was pleasant enough, though almost certainly waiting around for retirement. The small, balding man had a dozen photos of his cat decorating his office, and not a whole lot else. He was old-school, a little too 'talk-about-your-mother' for her tastes, but just checked out enough that she managed to avoid that particular can of worms, for which she was grateful. He cleared her for return to service, suggesting a follow-up in six weeks, to which she readily agreed, not wanting to seem defiant to Interim Captain Gates.

Wandering in the general direction of her apartment, she took her time, meandering off-route, thinking about her partner and the shift they'd made. Not no forever. Not just partners. Equals. Less than lovers, for now. More than friends.

Her feet carried her straight past her own neighborhood, out to where her distracted mind already resided, right to the front lobby of the SoHo loft she'd only started to become comfortable visiting regularly, before it was destroyed. The doorman recognized her with a friendly wave and ushered her in cheerfully, and before she even knew why she was there, she found herself at his newly-replaced front door. Havana colored exotic hardwood with a thin strip of glass running straight down the length. It was different. Different, but somehow, it managed to fit. The fingerprint scan, keyless door handle was what felt strange and out of place. Anyone else investing in one of those, she might have said they were going overboard, but, considering that the massive breakin and destruction of _Casa de Castillo_ was the reason for the new door in the first place, she heartily approved.

Rapping on the door, she heard a commotion – probably Castle tripping over something, as always – and waited patiently, listening to him swear and fumble around noisily before he finally answered the door. Relief washed over his handsome features, and he stepped back immediately to let her in.

"Beckett!" he chirped. "Come to make sure I didn't injure myself too badly playing Home Improvement?"

"Something like that," she replied, mostly just happy he wasn't put out by her unannounced visit. Really, she didn't know why she found herself there, except perhaps curiosity to see how the place had cleaned up, and what her partner planned to do with it.

(It definitely wasn't because she just wanted to see him, even though they had plans to visit Montgomery together in just a few hours.)

The material and structural waste had all been cleared, leaving behind a large and eerily empty canvas devoid of furniture and largely cleared of the human touch that had always made her feel at ease there. But the bones of the place were coming back together. It looked like Castle was attempting to paint the columns that supported the second level, stripped of the textured paneling that once decorated them. Bright red. Odd, but it worked. The loft still looked like the loft, still had that _Casa de Castillo _vibe, but subtly different. More Castle. Less... whoever designed it for him. She felt an irrational pang of jealousy in remembrance of one of their earliest cases, when he casually slipped in that he'd slept with the woman who'd done some interior decorating work. A tiny, vindictive part of her was glad that most of the traces of that alliance had been destroyed.

"How'd your chat with Gates go?" she ventured, trying to clear the unwelcome thoughts from her mind.

"She hates me," Castle stated blandly.

"But?"

"But I'm allowed to stay. She can't do anything. Well, she tried, she told me I have to see a department-affiliated shrink, on my own dime of course. But she can't really do anything as long as I'm not criminally insane." He gave her that arrogant, shit-eating grin, a remnant of his earlier self that almost made her want to hit him. (Almost, she reminded herself; as opposed to years ago when she _would have_ hit him for it. She concluded that she was going soft.)

"Oh my god, you're enjoying that, aren't you?" she asked incredulously.

"Little bit," he snickered, the picture of amused arrogance.

"Unbelievable," Kate growled, "she already hates _me_ and I didn't even do anything. Now she really hates me by association with you."

"Oh? She seemed quite fond of you when she talked to me. Gave me a whole lecture about how '_if you get any of my people in trouble...' _she would personally make certain that hell arrived at my front doorstep and stayed for good."_  
_

That got her attention. Huh. Gates had seemed quite chilly and more interested in her own career and in precinct politics than in her team and the officers. Perhaps the woman's heart was in the right place after all, even if she wasn't like Montgomery.

"Ryan and Espo said to say hi, by the way. Think I let them off the hook on manual labor too easily," he changed the subject in good humor, brushing his uncharacteristically disheveled hair from his brow, "but they've probably never painted a wall in their lives."

"Oh, and you have, Mr. Home Improvement?" she teased.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Castle remarked. "Alexis. Kids' interests change... well, like mine do, actually. Except I don't need to repaint a room every time I get into something. Oh, one year it'd be lime green because she got obsessed with dinosaurs. Next year, green was out, and everything went pepto-pink for a while. Between our old apartment and the place in the Hamptons, even here twice now, I've repainted her rooms a dozen times."

"Well, you are a man of many talents, aren't you?"

"I can't survive on my ruggedly handsome looks alone," he returned in mock offense. "Come over here," he shifted his attentions again, his short attention span breaking through. It seemed to Kate that he had only two modes: singularly obsessive nothing-else-exists attention, and his current state of jumping from one thing to another at lightning speed, like adult ADHD gone horribly wrong. Or horribly right. After all, he managed to write 26 novels and help solve some of the most difficult cases of the decade with that mind. She didn't pretend to understand how it worked, but she was quite glad that it did. Kate rolled her eyes as he dragged her by her arm over to the door and played with the inside keypad, working at lightning speed.

"Put your thumb here," Castle's rough palm laid over the back of her hand and guided her to position her thumb over the fingerprint scanner, unnecessarily threading his fingers through hers, sending tiny firewhirls coursing over her livewire skin, hyper-aware of his presence at her back. "It'll store your print so you won't need a card."

"Already figured out the system?" she asked, her voice less steady than she'd aimed for.

"Yeah, it was easy enough, the number of security systems we've dealt with over the years..."

"Hm, like I said, man of many talents."

She'd had a key to the loft since her apartment blew up, and Castle casually waved off her offer to give it back when she left after the week she spent at his place._ Keep it, _he'd dismissed with a casual air. _In case I ever need rescuing, you won't have to heroically break down a door._

Dangling tauntingly from her keyring for over a year, it had proved a temptation too many times to count. On the nights when the longing grew almost too much to bear, she would fall asleep restlessly fantasizing about (ab)using that key and sneaking silently into his bed or waiting in his office for him to come home, in various states of undress. She didn't imagine having a silent, permanent key now would make it any easier to resist, especially not now that they were so nerve-wrackingly, maddeningly close to taking the final leap.

The scanner beeped twice and flashed a little green light, indicating storage of her print.

"You want to know about all my talents?" he growled playfully and she took it as invitation to push the line a little further. Her slim, sliding fingers crawled along his bare arms and stroked him lightly, relishing the power in her simple touch when his eyes slid halfway closed and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards, a look between pleasure and pain. "Don't tease the animals, Detective."

_Someone should have warned her not to feed or tease the animals._

"Son of a bitch," Kate murmured, leaving Castle confused, wondering what he said or did to elicit that reaction.

* * *

**Note**: Two chapters in less than a week. I'm back, baby.

Comments, complaints, questions, concerns and constructive criticisms always appreciated!


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